cocktails with kevin

No promises

2008-08-27T22:49:00.001-04:00

I make no promises as to when I'll be up and running again. I'm not giving up. Just taking a break.

cocktailswithkevin is closing its doors . . . kinda

2008-07-11T14:21:00.003-04:00

Well, not exactly.

Basically I've just come to the conclusion that forking out $80 a year to have my own domain name just ain't worth it when I only use the site for blogging, which frankly I could do for the everyday-low-price of free. For that reason, beginning Friday, July 18, 2008 the blog will be coming to you live from www.cocktailswithkevin.blogspot.com

Mark your calendars, wake the kids, and phone the neighbors. The next rendition of the blog promises to be new and exciting and fun for the whole family. Until then, I'm gonna cash out my bar tab for this domain.

I look forward to seeing y'all on the flip side.

Dad's Bars recipe

2008-07-02T13:19:00.003-04:00

Because it's been a while since I posted a recipe, and I know you people are waiting on pins an needles for me to do so, I've decided to post my famous Dad's Bars recipe. These are so called because I make them and I'm a dad. Should you make them, you can refer to them however you like. Regardless you'll find them to be a yummy substitute for store-bought cereal slash breakfast slash MSG preservative bars.

In a large mixing bowl, blend together:

2 cups oats (quick or instant or whatever)
1 cup flaked coconut
1/4 cup peanuts
1/4 cup puffed wheat cereal (or puffed rice but don't splurge on a cartoon variety; get the big-ass bag of generic for a dollar)

In a saucepan melt one stick of butter with 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of honey and at least 1/4 cup of raisins. Just melt it. Don't let it simmer.

Pour the gooey sweetness into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix throughly. I cheat and use the mixer with the batter paddle attachment but your hands work just as well.

Dump this into a 9"x9" baking dish and cover it with wax paper or aluminum foil. Now press it down good and firm as hard as you can. If necessary, ask a portly person to step on it, being sure to keep the wax paper intact of course.

Put it in the freezer for two hours to set. Then pull it out and cut it into bars. I find this is most easily accomplished with one of those rocking style pizza cutters but do what you like. Alternatively we sometimes cut these into small cubes and call them Dad's Petits Fours.

Good for constipated toddlers. And daddies too!

Y2K+ Parenting

2008-06-26T08:53:00.000-04:00

This morning Meryl was sitting in my lap rolling a toy car around my shoulders and over my head.

Meryl: (bringing the car to a stop) Here we are at the library.

Me: Who works at the library?

Meryl: Mommy.

Me: What does Mommy do at the library?

Meryl: Pick out books.

Me: What else does she do?

Meryl: Type on the computer.

Me: What does she type?

Meryl: Dot org.

What had happened was . . .

2008-06-20T01:39:00.008-04:00

There are those who like to apologize for their absence from the innerwebs by prefacing their buhterial with some long diatribe as to why they haven't blogged in so long. Then there's me.

Movin' on.

I have recently begun taking the local movie theater up on their offer of a free kids' movie once a week. At two years of age, Meryl is limited in the amount of time she can successfully spend in a dark room crowded with half-eaten tubs of popcorn and sugar-laden daycare kids, so we've yet to make it through an entire film. Fine with me. Somehow neither Evan Almighty nor Doogal really managed to keep me on the edge of my seat for very long.

You see, the movie is free but pickings are slim. On our most recent trip, we could have seen Shrek 3, but since I haven't seen the first two episodes in the Shrek trilogy, I'm sure I'd be lost. The other option was a Veggie Tales flick.

I'm sorry, but I just don't understand the allure of proselytizing legumes that want me to accept them as my personal lord an savior. That's wrong an that's ig'nant. Don't get me started.

Another new local diversion for us has been the Goodwill store. I have written about the Goodwill before. Readers can learn more about my experiences with this charity-driven bargain barn by clicking here. But remember! Kevin is a monkey so he can do things you can't do.

Goodwill is nice because I don't have to worry about Meryl breaking things anymore than they're already broken. Plus the store's not that big so I can usually find a comfy spot on a dusty couch while she runs around or tries out the circa-1984 treadmill. The thing's not turned on so for some reason she likes to jump on it like a trampoline. Sure, we get a few stares from fellow shoppers, but who cares? They're not the boss of me.

One granola looking grandma in a pink tanktop and faded camo pants (both of which looked like she had bought them on a previous visit to the store I might add) did rub me the wrong way by asking if I was "babysitting today." God, how I hate that. I responded with my usual No, I'm parenting. I do it everyday to which she replied Let me get back there and check out that sewing machine, wouldya? I think she was one of those ebay people.

Anyway, parenting is good, marriage is good, and life is good.

It's all good.

Help Laverne Help Cory's Closet!

2008-06-11T14:55:00.003-04:00

Sometimes a guest blogger is better than an extended hiatus, especially when the guest blogger supports a worthy cause. Without further ado, here's the scoop from my sizza-in-law:

. . . My nephew Cory B. Fleming passed away in April, just shy of his 16th birthday.

Laverne is a 1972 Porsche 914 that is taking up space in my garage. Cory was my shinning hope of Laverne leaving my garage. I entered our beat up 1972 Porsche in a Cumulus‎ -Radio Cincinnati - WRRM, WGRR and WFTK radio contest . . .and she made it to the not so sweet 16.

I would like nothing more than to win the 96.5 Rock Your Ride 10,000 make over, get the Porsche sold and donate the sale proceeds to his Memorial Fund - - Cory's Closet. The fund was set up in connection with King's High school to help King's High School students afford to play LaCrosse, not a school-funded sport.

I was SURPRISED to see Laverne made it to the not so sweet 16, so now I'm BLEGGING (that's a cross between begging and blogging) for help.

VOTE 1972 Porsche NOW!!! The only draw back to voting is you must be a "ROCKHEAD" which you can do at the time of voting and then unsubscribe once we've won!
It only takes a few minutes
http://www.supertalkfm965.com/96ROCKYOURRIDENotSoSweet16/tabid/222/Default.aspx

I hope that makes sense! Thank you in advance for your time & your VOTE
If anyone wants to learn a little more about Cory here's a link to his MySpace Memorial Page .

Caroline Fleming

Atlanta Rollergirls

2008-05-12T23:09:00.005-04:00

Now y'all who read my blog more often than you clean your baseboards know that I seldom if ever ask you to give to any charities or anything like that. I don't ask people to jump rope for the cure or any other such nonsense. Just not my bag. But please hear me out. There are people who need your help.

I'm talking of course about the Atlanta Rollergirls. They kick ass and everyone who's anyone should run out and buy tickets to their next gig. I don't know when it is. Check their site by clicking hither.

Oh wait. That's wrong. Don't click there.

No, really. Don't. Please.

Here's their site: www.atlantarollergirls.com I knew I had it somewhere in my favorites.

The missus and I went to see them do their thing a couple of days ago and -- let me tell you -- you haven't lived until you've seen live roller derby. Remember Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling? This is even better.

I'm talking sexy chicks on wheels! Mean women. The kind your mother warned you about and the kind your father secretly hoped you'd bring home so she could help build a new back deck or change a carburetor. I'm talking about chicks pushing other chicks off the track so they go sailing into the audience.

And whatever your taste in roller derby queens, there's something here for everyone. From what I could gather after watching the Apocalypstix take on the Sake Tuyas, roller derby is kinda like tug-of-war. You want people of all shapes and sizes.

Hey, remember what Freddy Mercury said? They make the rockin' world go round, right? Well, when it comes to roller derby those girls make the rockin' world go

round and round,
oh round and round
The meanest hunk o woman
That anybody ever seen
Down in the arena

I'm trying to come up with a way to express to you the fun Elaine and I had on our latest mystery date but frankly words elude me at this point. How can one accurately describe an atmosphere where tailgaters are welcome to imbibe in the parking lot (and bring in their own bubbly for a couple dollars) while those with preschoolers are welcome to bring their progeny in to see the show? We didn't bring Meryl on this go-around, but there were little ones there, and I dare say they enjoyed watching the game. Some of the little ones in the audience even had moms on the rink!

I'm not making this up, people.

So please. Operators are standing by and the Atlanta Rollergirls need your help. Sure, they perform at the Yaarab Shrine temple on East Ponce, but those shriners are too busy helping needy children to donate money to the bloodbath that is Atlanta roller derby. The future of roller derby is in your hands.

You simply have to see it to believe it, folks.

Trust me on this one.

Godfather who art in Kevin

2008-05-10T10:10:00.002-04:00

Dear friends of ours have asked if I would be their child's godparent which, in and of itself, really should come as no surprise because I've been a parenting expert for a little over two years now, and if thinking you know everything equals all-knowing I've had a god complex for longer than that. If you put those two qualities together, surely you get the makings for a good godfather. Right?

Well, that's what I'm telling myself anyway.

Fully agreeing to this was something I did only after a healthy amount of self-debate. My understanding of godparents was that in the unfortunate event of the death of a child's actual parents, godparents step in and see to a child's spiritual wellbeing. My idea of spiritual wellbeing is usually limited to not drinking the grape before the grain, and even though I think that's good advice, it's not something I'd likely bestow upon a newly orphaned kid. Moreover I feel a certain amount of pressure just making sure my own daughter grows up in a healthy nurturing environment. God forbid my lack of godparenting skills should lead to my godchild growing up in a dysfunctional godfamily.

When I asked the friend what she hoped for from her new daughter's godfather, she expressed that she simply wanted someone to be there for her. Upon seeking advice from others, it's been suggested that I throw in a gift once a year or maybe a well thought out letter. This much I can certainly do, and in fact I think I'll look forward to it.

Even still gentle reader, I'm not without a few questions, namely: 1) Are you or do you have a godparent? and b) What all does godparenting entail?

Show your work.

Bloodborne pathogens: friend or foe

2008-05-07T13:44:00.003-04:00

Just yesterday my wife returned home from work to find me eyeball-deep in an online training session on bloodborne pathogens.

I know what you people are wondering. You're wondering what type of job I have that I need to engross myself with the spreading of bloodborne pathogens. Go ahead. Say it.

You're wondering this very thing.

I don't generally discuss work here for a number of reasons, the main one being that I want to be able to secure a job in the future without my potential employer being concerned that I'm going to blather all the corporate secrets and dirty laundry on my blog. I'm honestly not about that, but you never know what a ~~paranoid~~ potential boss is going to think. I also like to use my corner of the innerwebs as a place to excape from work, which means when it comes to worky worky the rule on my blog is no talky talky.

Me love work long time.

That being said, I teach English to people who speak their own kinda talk at home. I only bring it up because I want to point out I'm not in a job where I generally encounter bloodborne pathogens during my day. I work contractually for very few hours and we just don't practice surgery in my class. We don't tattoo. We don't inject. And none of us are blood brothers.

I do work out of a state agency though, so I'm guessing this mandate was a hand-me-down from some higher ups at the state level in case one of my students decides to self-amputate during the final exam. At least now I know how to handle the situation.

Note to self: Buy Laytex gloves.

No glove; no abstract non-count noun expressing like or emotion.

101 interesting things about me

2008-05-03T22:24:00.002-04:00

Occasionally when bloggers find themselves with little to write on, they post a list of things about them a reader might be interested to know. Here is mine:

1. I hate making lists.
2. That is all.

On a more uplifting note, here's a copy of a movie review for the film Evening that I just submitted to Netflix:

How such a stellar cast can come together and produce such insipid drivel as this is beyond me. The entire film takes place across two time periods and a dreamscape, all three of which are poorly transitioned from one to another. Something tells me this movie plays in one of the circles of Dante's Inferno. Just poor.

Seven windows to my soul

2008-04-22T14:18:00.005-04:00

Though dates had little meaning to me then it must have been September of 1977 that my mother registered me for kindergarten class. As I recall the teacher ran it like an open house where moms sat down and filled out the necessary paperwork while kids got to try out the standard array of classroom toys: blocks, cars, dolls, etc. Light refreshments were served in the form of animal crackers on napkins and orange juice in Dixie cups

These were the real animal crackers too and not the more economical bootleg Animalitos that I pick up in the ethnic foods aisle for my kid now. The cups were those standard run-of-the-mill pattern everyone had in their kitchen at the time. You know the one I mean? Harvest gold flowers with a fold-out handle on the cup for easy holdage. Speaking of which, be sure and check out this video for Dixie Cups in honor of Earth Day.

Anyway, I remember not caring for the orange juice because it had pulp floating on top. Now I prefer extra pulp while my toddler whines about it the extra fruity goodness and makes a point of dramatically spitting it out when I try and pass it off on her hoping she won't notice.

Another early school memory is from when I was at the listening center with Kristie in first grade. We each had those gynormous headphones on and were listening to some audio cassette that I'm sure told us to circle the red balloon or write the letter A or some other equally engaging task. At one point in the exercise, Kristie leaned down into the speaker of the tape recorder to tell me she thought it was almost time to line up for lunch. She thought somehow that by talking into the speaker of the tape recorder that the sound would electronically be transferred into my ears.

Stupid Kristie.

At 13 I took piano lessons. I had played the trumpet in band so I wasn't totally ignorant when it came to reading music and I had practiced my piano recital piece ad nauseum I'm sure much to my family's delight. It was I Just Called to Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder.

When the time came I chose to play the song without sheet music because I had been told that would leave a bigger impression on the audience. I made it through almost the entire song, including a major key change, without so much as a single flub, but for whatever reason when I got back to the refrain on the last verse I missed my fingering and quickly broke tempo in order to try and correct the mistake. Scott, a fellow student, claimed he couldn't tell that I had goofed. He no doubt lied, but he was kind that way.

Nice Scott.

Not long after my seventeenth birthday I was living as an exchange student in Seyssinet, France. I took classes with several other American highschoolers during the morning, and we were all left to our own devices for the rest of each afternoon. There was this one chick who always wanted to scribble defaming remarks about me in my workbook. She was cute and a year older than I, but because I was a late bloomer, I didn't know at the time that workbook scribbling was some highschool girl pre-dating ritual.

One day she proposed getting together to hang out in the park after school. She wanted champagne to commemorate the event and indeed it was easily attainable at the local grocery store so I bought a bottle. Several giggles and quaint remarks later the bottle was empty but I wasn't feeling particularly intoxicated nor had the courtship progressed beyond sideways glances and flips of the hair, so I proposed going back to the grocery store for a bottle, only this time for a bottle of rum and a bottle of Coca Light.

I'm sure some of the more pessimistic among you can see where this is going. You would be right in your assessment. I've got family who reads my blog, so I'll spare y'all the sordid details, only some of which I even remember to this day.

There was the expected first shared kiss, another shared kiss, feeling up, being felt up, vomiting, foggy memories, having to move to a vomit-free bench, regaining consciousness with a semi-circle of nosey locals watching the show, getting on the wrong tram and having to eventually take a taxi back home. The brief courtship didn't last long after that. OK, not at all. The paramour did suggest weeks later that we stay in touch once we got back to the other side of the pond, but I think my ego had been damaged by the whole thing, so I never tried to contact her after that.

Some chicks you just gotta stay away from.

While going to college I still lived at home. One morning when I was in my early twenties I woke up at oh dark thirty to the sound of a ringing phone. Still asleep I instinctively picked up the receiver but said nothing. I could hear my father on another extension talking with some other man whose name I recognized but had never met. Without even needing to eavesdrop any further to determine what was going on, I hung up the phone and whispered My grandmother just died. She had been my last living grandparent.

By the time I hit thirty I had been married a couple of years to my wife whose grandmothers were both still living. One day one of them called, and again I answered the phone. When I learned who was calling I was quick to tell her that my wife wasn't home but would be back within the hour to which the elderly woman replied That's okay. I called to talk to you.

I had agreed to help her with some shopping the day before and apparently something made it into her grocery bag that wasn't hers. She was calling to see if instead maybe it was mine. When I asked what it was in the bag she explained that it was a toy car -- not a matchbox sized car but a model replica sized car -- and she thought maybe I collected them and was therefore the rightful owner. Incidentally I don't collect model cars and never have, but I liked that she had thought of me in this way. After years of being grandparent-less, on that day I felt like I was a grandson again.

Only last week my wife and I were talking about the television shows my daughter has, much to my dismay, taken a liking too. One of these god-awful shows is Big Big World which is hosted by a huge Plushy who talks like a washed-out stoner who hails from the West Coast. I told my wife that Meryl and I don't watch that show very often because, as I put it, the show comes on at the buttcrack of dawn. Meryl, who being not yet two years old and therefore at the stage where she parrots back everything she hears, responded simply yeh . . . uh huh . . . butt crackers.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the seven windows to my soul.

I'll teach you

2008-04-19T09:01:00.001-04:00

I am 35 years old. I have yet to learn the Electric Slide.

Truth be told

2008-04-15T15:07:00.003-04:00

Time is a precious thing when I've a kid who's sleeping and I've doubled my teaching schedule on top of that, but I'll make this brief. In response to which of my previous claims listed here was not 100% true, I'll preclude with this:

In Steve Martin's book, Shopgirl, the main character whose name is Mirabelle has a theory on lying that for whatever reason I think has merit. She says that in order for a lie to be effective it must have at least a certain minutiae of truth to it and it must also be embarrassing to tell. Each prerequisite serves its own purpose. A lie that has a certain element of truth to is easier to tell convincingly, and a lie that was somewhat embarrasing for the teller to tell is less likely to lead to having to answer further questions that, if answered wrong, might uncover the lie being told.

It is true that I do not wear underwear, but it is not true that I don't own a pair of button fly jeans. I do in fact own a single pair of button flies which makes the last statement untrue. Such is the beauty of the coordinating conjunction. Sneaky little devil.

In response to the few family members and lone googler who responded, the statements about driving the police car and chatting with the priest in the confessional were in fact true. My sister was quick to point out a typo on my part about the police car already running and the cop tossing me the keys. I'll be honest. I don't remember which part of that was true. Was the police cruiser already running when I jumped in, or did the cop toss me the keys to crank it? I can't remember. I would have corrected the discrepancy in my writing were I to have detected it first, but since it was already pointed out, I thought shame on me; I'll just leave it.

As to chatting with the priest, again that was 100% true. My wife and I were in Prague on vacation. He caught me snapping flash photography in the cathedral which is one of the no-no's though he didn't say so and I admired him for indirectly correcting my errant behavior by instead simply engaging me in conversation. He asked me what my religious background was, and I told him I was not Catholic but that my wife was. Apparently, wven as a non-native English speaker, he saw through this non-answer and asked me again what my religion was. When I confessed that I was without religion, Father Petr was quick to share that he felt the message of Jesus Christ was intended for all people because Jesus was the Prince of Peace. When i returned from Prague, I sent Father Petr and email stating that I had cancer and that my wife was in the cathedral that day lighting a candle for me to which he responded:

Thanks !

Praying for your healing.

Fr. Peter

Five months later after undergoing chemotherapy I wrote to Father Petr again updating him on my condition and thanking him for his prayers and kind words. He replied with these kind words. Now, I don't normally make personal emails public, but I think his message is one that would benefit others and therefore should be shared.

Dear Kevin,   I wish you a strong health, all the best for your common life, and the great gift to have a grateful heart in all moments of your life, even those less nice ones.   May the Little Jesus, the Prince of Peace, bless and protect you all!

Father Petr
Monastery of the Infant Jesus of Prague

Even four years later rereading his email makes me a little teary-eyed. I was a stranger he didn't know from Adam. Being the head abbot at what many vacationers see as a common tourist attraction and many Catholics see as a miracle site, he likely encounters thousands of people each day. Surely his in-box is overflowing, but he took the time and energy to write back to me, someone who lives a third of the way around the planet, and in a foreign language no less. I think that says a lot about him and his vocation.

Father Petr's commander-in-chief faces much criticism as he pays his first papal visit to the United States, one of which is that he hasn't done enough to evangelize and bring more sheep to the flock. I'm not Catholic so it's not really my place to make that criticism, but I would dare say that if he's trying to up his numbers, he should consider putting Father Petr in charge of the Programming and Outreach Department. Not only that but Father Petr gets my vote for sainthood.

No lie.

Will the real Kevin please stand up?

2008-04-06T23:14:00.004-04:00

There are things about me you people wouldn't understand. Things you couldn't understand. Things you . . . shouldn't . . . understand, but in the interest of public interest I feel it's time I came clean. If confession is good for the soul, then I'm about to do my spiritual body good. I'm going to share with you five things about me, one of which is a bold-faced lie. Cause that's how I roll. Oh yeh, and I'll elaborate a little on each one so's y'all can get some idea as to which one's made up.

Kinda like on Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!, only without that smarmy Peter Sagal and those pesky intermittent requests for contributions from listeners like you.

1. I once spoke with a Catholic priest in a confessional.

Well, I wasn't in the confessional but he was. I don't confess to priests, because I have you people to tell my dirty little secrets to. Anyway, it was at the Church of Our Lady Victorius where it's locally known as Kostel Panny Marie Vítězné. The cathedral is home to the Infant Jesus of Prague. As it happened I was merely walking around the church snapping flash photographs when Father Petr stepped out and asked me where I was from. Not scoldingly either. He just struck up a conversation with me. His English was good and before we parted ways he wrote down his email address on my palm pilot.

2. I am a former smoker.

A pack a day, and sometimes if I was out late or working on a paper I probably stretched it into a pack and a half. I started smoking Kent, then went on to whatever brand was cheapest, and finished off with Carlton before finally quitting after six years. On the evening I decided to quit I threw all my cigarettes out my car window along with empty packets, lighters, matches, even old butts while driving home. Sure, I may have pissed off Woodsy Owl, but I was determined to snuff out Joe Camel.

3. I once drove a police car.

Well, not for a living or anything, but I did hop in the driver's seat of one once and back it up so as to unblock the parking space my car was in. The engine was already running and the door was even open. The cop was standing there, and when he asked me if he was blocking my way and I said yes, he tossed me the keys and told me to back it up. I did. Those cars are plush on the inside. Our tax dollars at work, I suppose.

4. I have appeared in newspapers, radio and even television.

While I don't have the time to get up on the community theater stage as much as I used to, I've performed in a number of local shows and have therefore had my name and mug in the paper a few times. I've been on the radio twice, once as part of a scout tour when I was eight, and then later I was a caller on the David Paul show.back when he was on WSB. As far as television appearances go, mine aren't that glamorous. Once I was lurking in the background of a televised town meeting and another time viewers could see me waving to the camera along with everyone else at a children's program at my local public library.

5. Because I think relieving oneself should be done as quickly and easily as possible, I do not wear underwear and I don't own any button-fly jeans.

Two things I fail to understand when it comes to this are: 1) why more guys don't go the commando route; and B) why people are ooked out when I say that I do. Does underwear really serve any vital role these days? Is it just a hand-me-down from the Victorian era? And as far as button flies go, unless you're Amish (and if you are shame on you for being at a computer terminal!) why would anyone opt for this type of closure? A guy who wears them has to stand at the urinal an extra thirty seconds trying to get the damn things buttoned back up. And if the second to top button comes undone while he's buttoning the top one, that's another ten seconds added on right there. Sheesh!

OK, enough confession. Though while I'm at it I should probably let you know that this post is in response to a meme sent to me by Blog Antagonist who as it happens is offering a prize to a random correct guesser of her own little untruth. If you can successfully guess mine, your prize is nothing more than the joy of winning which basically equals suckitude. I guess I could offer you something from the "gift drawer" but who in their right mind would want some thrice re-gifted Ikea napkin holders? Besides we might actually use those some day.

Tell you what, if you guess correctly, you can have my voice on your home answering machine.

Uncovering the ultra high price of a Subway sandwich

2008-04-02T15:42:00.002-04:00

Dear Guy at Subway,

Thank you for the prompt and efficient service you provided to me and my daughter during what was for you I imagine a rather busy lunch hour. You took my order, grabbed the necessary fixings and prepared my sandwich and hers with aplomb. When I asked about the seemingly exorbitant price for a child's mini-sub, you were kind enough to point out that it also came with a drink and the toy you had provided along with a stack of complimentary napkins.

I took you up on the accompanying drink and picked out a Glaceau Vitamin Water even though, unlike you, I am old enough to remember when we called this stuff Kool-Aid and, not only did it taste great, it only cost about 59 cents per rain barrel to make. My mother could make enough for the whole neighborhood in a matter of seconds, and unlike the poor schlubs in the TV commercial, we never were chased down by some creepy anthropomorphic drinking pitcher.

The toy you gave my daughter was a plastic replica of a microphone, small enough to get lost behind the couch cushions but big enough that she couldn't swallow it. This is a good thing because, seeing as how to a toddler the item looks like one big lollipop, she very well might try to put it in her mouth. On closer inspection however, I realized that the top of the microphone comes off to reveal a red felt-tip marker.

A red felt-tip marker?

Guy at Subway, what did I ever do to you? What heinous misdoing or unforgivable transgression could I have ever committed that you can now reasonably justify taking revenge on me in this way? I have a good mind never to eat in your establishment again if this is the thanks I get. I don't care how much weight Jared lost.

Have you no clue what havoc my child would reek with this weapon of mass destruction? Within a mere five minutes of my multi-tasking parental supervision otherwise known as checking email, fixing more coffee or putting poop in Dad's potty, she would deface all the wonderful goods her mother and I have worked so hard to earn the money to buy.

The tablecloth we bought in Provence would be ruined. Our high thread-count bed linens would forever have red scribbles on them. The walls I spent weeks painting would be for her a mere canvas upon which to express her angst at having such materialistic parents. Even the cat would likely not escape her pen-wielding wrath.

You appear to be a young subway guy who, judging by your late morning work schedule, either were asked to leave high school prior to graduating or perhaps you just left of your own volition. Maybe slinging the Dijon horseradish sauce was a requirement of your probation. Who knows? Regardless, I am prepared to cut you a certain amount of slack for not thinking outside the protective sneeze guard. But get a grip.

Mischievous toddlers and red marker don't mix.

Sincerely,
Kevin

Me so holy

2008-03-27T23:26:00.007-04:00

I know I need to buckle down and get to work on revising this blog template, but I'd rather spend my downtime sorting through old pictures.

Here's one from my recent road trip up from Florida. Who would have thought I would have spotted His Holiness and the VeggieTales in front of the VIP Spa off I-75? As I drove by he was chanting something about them not being from the one true church but that he still loves them

He loves them long time.

Pyramid peddlers be gone

2008-03-27T12:33:00.002-04:00

You know if there's any group of people that get on my nerves six ways til Sunday it's pyramid peddlers. I swear I get irritated just thinking about them, those wide-eyed weasels with their cheesy conversation starters and their supposedly slick spiel on how to get rich quick. I don't mean to sound overly nasty but I just think the planet would be a better place without these people.

Meryl and I were accosted at the local Wal-Mart by a man-and-woman team just the other day and in the children's toy department of all places! They paid her a compliment and, being the well-meaning stupe that I am, I answered back with a sincere thank you and follow-up reply. That's when the guy mistook my expression of gratitude as his opportunity to get his foot in the door. I was quick to cut him off once I caught on to the game.

First of all the guy was sporting a lightweight tan jacket zipped up to the neck so all potential marks could easily read the pyramid scheme logo on his lapel. I suppose that would have been a worthwhile tactic were it not for the fact that anybody with half a brain would have recognized the label as a well-known Ponzi scheme. Sure, the company he represented may sell the occasional mortgage, insurance package or investment instrument, but you can tell by the look on the guy's face that the way he plans on making money is by getting other people who are equally as gullible as he was to sell their integrity along with the names and numbers of their friends and family. I'm no genius but even I can spot the shady smile and rapid-fire schlock coming out of someone's mouth that in essence negates whatever he's saying and instead serves as his own pisspoor attempt to delve into my pocket or social network or both.

How gross!

While I was quick to rat this couple out to customer service, I don't know what good it did. On the relatively few occasions I've been targeted by these types of people, the most recent onces occurred at a Wal-Mart or Sam's. Once two guys from the Bush-backed cult known as Teen Challenge solicited me for a donation as I was walking in a Wal-Mart, and at Sam's it seems like there's always a fund raising car wash going on for some transient fly-by-night church slash tax shelter. Sometimes I think the fickle finger of Sam Walton is reaching beyond the grave and inviting these greed demons into his stores. As if getting the government to usurp our private property rights wasn't enough!

I think what bothers me most about the pyramid peddlers though is that they fail to see their own ignorance and greed and instead assume (or at least hope) that the rest of us are as gullible as they were. They think that because they were dumb enough to plunk down cash for an initial investment in garbage shilling, so will we. Fat chance.

Think about it. The guy I met recently touted himself an investment manager who had recently moved down from New Jersey. OK, his accent led credence to the Jersey part, but aside from that I wasn't buying. If he was successful in New jersey, why was he here in a Georgia Wal Mart trying to drum up customers or fellow pyramid peddlers? Secondly, while I have a large number of people I consider family and friends, and their respective intelligence levels spans the smarts spectrum, I can't think of one who would actually be dumb enough to trust their child's inheritance with some schlub I claimed to have met at the local megalomart. And they sure as hell aren't going to trust me with it!

I'm sorry. I just keep better company than that.

Whether it's Pampered Shit or White Trash Living or Crymerica or Scamway or Unimaginative Memories or any of that garbage, I am just no interested.

On the flip side, we're out of Thin Mints and I wouldn't mind trying those Samoas this year.

Bootleg blog template

2008-03-22T13:47:00.003-04:00

As of late I have messed up my blog template and had to temporarily resort to what I used as a blog template back in the day. Let me know how badly this sucks and I may speed up my response time for fixing it. Otherwise this may get deprioritized on my list of pointless things to get accomplished.

Pass the Grand Duchy on the left-hand side

2008-03-18T18:44:00.007-04:00

Barring the Vatican, Luxembourg is the tiniest country I've visited so far. My wife and I arrived there after roughly two and a half hours of driving having started our route on Avenue de Franklin Roosevelt leading out of Gent in Belgium and eventually snaking along the E411 leading to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Much like the invitations motorists find when entering Switzerland, Monaco or other small European countries, Luxembourg greets new arrivals with billboards advertising tax shelter opportunities and anonymous banking. Beyond the billboards we found ourselves in the nation's capital city, also called Luxembourg, or as we say in our kinda talk Luxembourg.

Getting there was half the fun as I recall which was good because Elaine and I didn't spend more than an afternoon in the country. We got out of the car and explored the main park before wandering around in the shops downtown. Luxembourg and especially Luxembourg City is a moneyed part of the planet. We were without child at the time but even still Elaine was quick to find a children's clothing store and pick out pricey garments for the baby that we might possibly someday maybe have. As it turned out the store was part of a European chain called Natalys. Clothes are available for purchase on the internet, but we've yet to place an order. I talked her into foregoing the expense and instead use the money to take in a late lunch.

Our waiter, who commuted from France everyday in order to report to work, spoke with us about the benefits of living in one country and working in the other. His English was far superior to most Frenchmen of his ilk and he was most friendly. He would constantly confuse the English verbs earn and win though, so listening to his story was at times like listening to someone read a Mad Lib. My wife hung on his every word, but I think it was his shoulder length greasy hair and Gallic nose that she liked most. So impressed was she with our server that he brought her out of her English-only cocoon. When he asked us if we wanted anything else, she said confidently, "de l'eau s'il vous plait."

I don't know if she really wanted water so much as she wanted a youthful swarthy guy to do her bidding.

Grace Jones: one sexy sexagenarian

2008-03-17T13:42:00.007-04:00

For some strange reason I have always had a bit of a celebrity crush on Grace Jones. Well, maybe not a crush exactly. I think I'd be too frightened to spend the night alone with her, but even from the time I was young and saw her in Conan the Destroyer and Vamp back in the mid-80s, I just thought she exuded sexuality. From her striking beauty to her bewitching vocals to her on-screen vivaciousness, there's just something about her.

She was also quite the trend setter in her time because it was she along with David Bowie and Annie Lennox if you ask me that introduced that androgynous mystique that helped define the 80s. Later performers like Boy George and Sinead O'Connor would try to cash in on it but somehow fail. Grace Jones though could sport an athletic cut man's suit and make it work.

Saint Wikipedia teaches us that Grace Jones was banned from all Disney theme parks worldwide after baring her breasts at a concert in Disneyland. Her official website however does not confirm this, so this may be one of the few things found on the innerwebs that isn't actually true. I don't remember seeing Grace Jones bare-breasted in anything, but MrSkin.com (not a saint, mind you) says I must have gotten up to get more Smurfberry Crunch at the wrong time during Vamp because she was naked at some point from the waist up during a scene. I'd guess the real reason she's been banned from Disney is because she has a better rack than Snow White and Cinderella put together. I'll add Vamp to the Netflix queue to confirm.

Sadly, Saint Wikipedia also teaches us that Grace Jones is going to be 60 this year, and for this reason I think she should fall off my celebrity crush list. Jodie Foster remains on even after her coming out and Juliette Lewis, because she was born a year after me, will probably always be on it. But right now, eligibility to collect social security is a deal breaker in my book.

Grace, if you're reading this, it's not you. It's me. For years, I was a slave not just to your rhythm but also to your stunning physique and slight Caribbean accent, but it's time to part ways. So here I go.

Walking.

Walking.

In the rain.

An open letter to my daughter

2008-03-13T21:15:00.004-04:00

Dear Meryl,

Now, just a few weeks short of your second birthday I find myself looking back fondly on the times that you have shared with your mother and me and the growth that you have shown since May 5, 2006 when we first brought you home from the hospital. You have definitely made me a proud father. I could go on and on about the things I adore about you, but here are just a few things that come to my mind right now:

Your vocabulary has grown leaps and bounds just in the past few months. I love that you can recognize certain letters like O and M and E and even moreso that you understand that they represent sounds. I don't care that you say buh buh buh regardless of what letter I ask you to sound out, you know that there's a sound attached to the symbol. At your age, that's pretty incredible.

True, you did identify and say liquor store today and when the cashier asked you what Dad was buying you correctly identified the 12 bottles on the counter as wine, but we'll just chalk that up to time spent in front of the boob tube. Damn dirty SuperWhy.

While you used to only eat the pablum found in the various stages of Gerber jars, you now have learned to like such relatively eccentric foods as black olives, shredded Parmesan cheese, and Skyline chili. Even when something's kinda spicy, you're not afraid to keep eating. Speaking of which, I like how when you bite into something a tad piquant, you stick out your tongue to rub it with your hand and exclaim Sypee!!! Sypee!! Those S-P blends aren't easy, but you'll get the hang of it sooner or later. And by the time you can actually pronounce spicy, I'll bet you'll be downing jalapeños as a bedtime snack.

In the past few months, you have evolved into quite the pretender. This seemed to have started a few months back when you would ask for a pot and a spoon and when you're mother or I would ask you what you were making, without looking up you would say simply soup or rice or sometimes just hot. Ah yes, that secret family recipe for Hot. Mmm mmm good.

Now you enjoy opening and closing doors after announcing that you're going bye bye. When we ask you where you're going, you tell us you're headed to work or to Grandmommy's or to Boompa's. Sometimes you're on your way to the store to buy cookies. Other times you're going to the doctor, who I might add, you describe as being nice. You like to make me ask you three times for a goodbye kiss only to refuse me while readily granting our dog one each time you open the door and let the pricey cool air out of the house. Eventually I'll say things like I don't want to pay to air condition the whole neighborhood and fatherly stuff like that, but right now I'm enjoying this game as much as you are.

Speaking of our dog, William T., I think it's cool that you call him T whereas Ambrose you just refer to as Cat. Your mom thinks this is because Ambrose is harder to pronounce. I think it's just a keen observation on your part where you simply abbreviate what your mom calls him which is You Asshole Cat. Just remember that Mommy, using asshole as a term of endearment, doesn't mean any harm by it, but you are not allowed to say it until you're at least three.

You also play relatively well with others. Once on the playground at our local park you pretended to drive a car. When a little boy only a month younger than you came over to sit down beside you, you looked at him briefly before getting up and coming over to me. So as not to be heard by him, you leaned close to me and whispered with an upward intonation boy? like you were asking me a question. When I assured you that he could play beside you you went back to the driver's seat for a few minutes. Then you came back to me and whispered again. Boy? It was cute, but just remember that outside of the playground, you're not to ride in cars with boys until you're at least thirty-three.

More recently you frolicked in the snow with your two-year-old cousin in Cincinnati. At times you weren't crazy about the cold, but you learned to adjust. When your older cousin held onto something you desperately wanted, you would grunt her name while clenching your fists and tensing up every muscle in your body. Sharing is a learned skill, I'm sure, but you'll get the hang of that too.

Not since infancy have you been a cuddly sleeper. Even when your mother or I beg you to come lay down in the bed with us because you sometimes awake before the sun comes up, you refuse and instead insist on starting your day. I guess it's good that you live by the old adage "Early to bed; early to rise . . ." but it sure would be nice if when you wake up at 5:30 in the morning, you either come lay down with us or at least use that pre-dawn solitude for some quiet meditation.

As for the nighttime rituals, I like that you can pick out what stories you want to hear and even go so far as to say certain words aloud as I read them. I would guess this is basically rote memorization on your part, but it's vital to acquiring the beginning stages of reading. When you picked up my book this evening and flipped through it you asked quizzitively Pictures? I like that you like books.

Like I said, this list could span pages upon pages. While going from being a family of two to being a family of three was quite the adjustment for your mom and me, it seems like everyday now you do something that makes us happy. Sure, there are times when you are quite the pill, but I think this is to be expected from a kid of your age. You already impress me as a girl who's sharp witted and has a developing sense of humor. Those two things will get you far. One thing worth working on though is your unwillingness to clean up a mess you've made. Turning a blind eye to all the toys you've strewn across the living room floor only to lose interest in them moments later is only appropriate for younger babies.

And daddies in their mid-thirties.

Love,
Your dad

Cincinnati, a city of sliders and slide-offs

2008-03-11T13:29:00.004-04:00

On a few occasions, the most recent of which was this past weekend, I have had the opportunity to visit Cincinnati, a city so metropolitan that it merits its own football team, its own baseball team and even its own style of chili. When I go there I am surrounded by constant reminders of my status as an outsider. Not only do these people pronounce pin and pen differently (whereas for me they both rhyme with grin), this weekend the city was taken aback by almost a foot of snow.

First of all, that much snow is something that native Georgians typically only see in the movies, and when we do see it on screen, while we're jealous of the kids on the sleds, we're glad we don't have to expose ourselves to such elements or worse yet shovel it. Driving in it is also something I'm glad I don't have to do on a regular basis because, as Cincinnatians proved during the past few days, bringing a car to an abrupt halt on an icy expressway is not an easy feat. A news reporter referred to traffic due to slide-offs. Who ever heard of a slide-off? To me, it was as unfamiliar as a snozzberry.

Because I needed gas and mainly because I secretly just wanted to get out and experience frozen tundra driving first-hand, I made a brief trip to Kroger which is only fitting since the company is headquartered in Cincinnati along with Procter and Gamble and the makers of Sunny-D. For fear of being ridiculed by a Kroger clerk for not saying pop, I suppressed the urge to ask where to find cokes. They were easy enough to spot anyway.

Seeing so-called diluted vodka and diluted gin in the beer-and-wine aisle struck me as odd for a couple of reasons. Number one, here in the bible belt we reserve the sale of spirits to more sinful establishments and number two, where's the fun in diluted liquor? When I asked the guy if they sold 80 proof alcohol, he informed me that I would have to go to a state store. State store sounds like an ambiguous term to me, but I guess it's no less descriptive than package store, which is how many liquor stores refer to themselves here.

On the way out, I walked gingerly across the parking lot to my car, making sure my feet only stepped in areas that were at least relatively free of slick ice. On the few occasions that I did slide, even if only a little bit, I'd get that unsettling feeling of blood rushing to my head in anticipation of a fall and subsequent blow to the skull. If walking like an inept toddler didn't draw enough attention my way and make me stand out, I also had on a shirt, two sweaters and a jacket to protect me from the cold.

Half way through my arctic sojourn from the self checkout to the car, a dad and daughter came barreling out of the store and passed me. His only protective wear was a Cincinnati Reds windbreaker, and the girl, who looked to be about nine or ten years old, was wearing trendy plastic footwear. I looked down at her shoes and couldn't imagine how she managed to stay upright in them on the snow and ice. To add insult to injury, while I was being extra careful not to put my foot on any patches of frozen slush for fear of crashing to the ground, this girl was making a point to jump in them the same way a similarly inclined kid here might jump into puddles.

Obviously I survived another trip to the frosty land of Ohio if I'm now sitting back at home with my trusty laptop. I'm glad I managed to make it to Skyline for a five-way bowl of chili and regret that I've yet to taste a White Castle slider. But having already ventured south on I-75 and just recently going almost as far north on the same road, you can imagine that I've gotten kind of tired of packing and unpacking. Town to town, up and down the dial. Maybe you and me were never meant to be.

But Cincinnati, think of me once in a while.

Phone frenzy

2008-03-06T20:56:00.003-05:00

To whom it may concern,

Please be advised that the following times, listed in chronological order, are acceptable intervals during which to call my house:

7:30 AM - Noon Yes, I am almost always up that early, and if you call before noon, you're guaranteed to catch me before my daughter goes down for a nap. On weekends, the answer you get will be much more jovial if you hold your call until after 10:00 AM.

4:00 PM - 7:00 PM Again, I'm awake. Baby is awake. All is well. We might be eating dinner, but we still welcome warm wishes and hearty hellos.

And . . . well . . . that's basically it.

Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

The Management

From Naples to Atlanta: fame and infamy along I-75

2008-03-04T13:25:00.004-05:00

Sunday I was saddled with the responsibility of driving my father-in-law's car back to Georgia from southern Florida, all in all a ten-hour drive. The bulk of my day was spent on I-75 watching fellow motorists scoff at speed limits, recklessly change lanes, cut me off unnecessarily, pick their noses, yammer on their cell phones and pull off to buy fudge, pecan logs, coconut spread, citrus products, adult novelties, Cracker Barrel biscuits with sawmill gravy and discounted tickets to Disney World and Orlando time-share presentations. A happening drive, let me tell you.

The automobile I was driving was quite the sporty roadster with race car-tight steering and a generous amount of road feel. I didn't tinker with the gadgetry very much because when it comes to figuring out how to work the luxury features in automobiles I am not what you'd call a quick learner. Because my brain is loaded with so many ingenious theories and the solution to much of the world's problems, I just don't have room for such fiddle faddle as how to turn on the rear window defrost or cruise control. Gas equals go and brake equals stop. That's all I know. I was asked to keep an eye on two gages along the way, but I forgot which two twenty minutes into the trip. As best as I could tell though, bass and treble were doing just fine.

The trunk was equipped with a CD changer, but I was not provided with instructions on how to load it. I had brought CD audio books along for the ride, but when I tried to open the changer to put in disc one of Les Miserables, I got nothing but a blinking green light. No tray came out. No door popped open. Nothing.

When I got in the car and pressed the CD button on the console the dash informed me that no CD changer was detected. I got out, tried to open the changer again, checked to make sure there were no loose wires and got back in the car. Again the readout on the dash claimed the car wasn't equipped with a CD changer. I pushed the button again when I was on the road. No CD changer. I waited until I was further in the trip thinking perhaps the car had to be doing at least 70 in order for the changer to work. No luck.

My only choices in listening entertainment were the radio, road noise or cassettes from my father-in-law's personal collection which included such gems as Shagger's Delight, Boogie Woogie Classics or a mixed tape he had hand labeled The Original Little Richard: Not the Fake Little Richard. I found one tape that offered Cole Porter jazz tunes and opted for that.

A brief stop in Bushnell, Florida afforded me a bite to eat at a Waffle House where I had barely escaped being kidnapped by scamsters two years earlier. This particular meal was enjoyed without incident. The place was filled with a colorful mix of Bushnell locals and cross-country travelers. Quite the dichotomous bunch.

I got back on the road where most license plates I saw revealed I was surrounded almost exclusively by Buckeyes, Hoosiers and Michiganders. Occasionally I'd see a New Yorker, and about every fifth car was from Ontario. I know it's silly of me but whenever I come up on a Canadian license plate, I can't help but peek in at the people in the car thinking maybe they'll be dressed in seal-skin parkas and at least one passenger will wield a harpoon. Alas, I have never spotted a single Inuit on the road in traditional garb. I did see a Quebecker chomping down on a McGriddle though, and I think that's wrong on so many levels that I can't even begin to address them here.

For every billboard that said WE BARE ALL there must have been at least that many that tried to sell me a $390 vasectomy. The guys pictured on the vasectomy ads looked like the kinds of men we don't want reproducing in the first place and the women in the Cafe Risque ads looked like their headshots dated back to the Carter administration. Kinda surreal.

Near the end of the trip when I was blazing through Macon, GA, the birthplace of Little Richard, I decided to listen to the bootlegged tape of the original. Cranking up the volume during a traffic lull I entertained myself and others with Long Tall Sally and Tutti Frutti. I thoroughly enjoyed You Keep a-Knockin' and near the Forsyth Street exit I swear I think I passed a girl named Daisy who almost drove me crazy. Wop-bop-a-loo-mop-alop-bam-boom.

I finally pulled into my driveway around 5:00 and I couldn't have been happier. I was greeted by a beautiful wife and a wonderful daughter who was one tooth short from when I had last laid eyes on her. Over dinner I shared stories of my journey. After all, my butt seldom left the driver's seat but through the windshield I saw much of our nation's wonders, including the state peanut monument in Turner County, Georgia and the relocated hurricane survivors in Broward County, Florida. I passed horse farms in Ocala and cotton farms in Vienna.

Even though I stopped at that Waffle House for a patty melt plate, I managed to do without the fresh citrus, pecan logs or coconut spread. As much as I wanted to, I didn't stop in Sarasota to visit the Ringling Brothers museum. I did however stop at exit 374 where a Cafe Risque billboard had invited me to turn right. Instead I turned left so as to get gas. There was a large woman sitting in a folding chair outside the station. I was glad she didn't bare all.

My toddler lost a tooth

2008-03-03T13:15:00.005-05:00

My child lost a tooth over the weekend, and I'm sure that had she been five or six I would have relished her right of passage into budding childhood but since she is not yet two, I was not overly ecstatic to hear about the incident. As soon as I got word, my mind went wild thinking about the various horrific possibilities. What about infection? Tooth fragments and such?

Besides, I'm a language teacher and I know we rely on our two front teeth for our interdental and labio-dental fricatives like in the words thimble and this or fairy and very. What would become of her speech development? Would she develop a lisp?

Anyway apparently she was sitting in a grown-up chair chugging happily on her sippy cup when she tried to scoot her chair back by pushing on the table with her feet. This trick works in her house but not at the home of the family where she was staying at the time. Instead of scooting back in her chair and getting down from the dining room table, the chair just toppled backward. She lifted her arms possibly to try and catch herself before hitting the floor, and because her tooth was wedged into the slit in the spout on the cup lid, the leverage of her arm along with the cup popped the tooth out clean as a whistle.

Yuck. Parental fears aside, just thinking about how it must have felt gives this dentist phobe the creeps.

Meryl is perhaps lucky that although she wasn't with her parents at the time, she was with my brother and his wife who have successfully raised two kids of their own and were quick to react. They mended her and comforted her the best they could and located the tooth to make sure it was indeed all out. Panicky phone calls were made, tears were shed, blood was mopped up. They even made Meryl scrambled eggs afterward and then gave her a bath.

And when a kid loses a baby tooth, that's all that can be done. I know because I confirmed this on the google. It was the F tooth for those keeping score at home. A maxillary central incisor, but now it's gone.

Well, it's not gone exactly. I have it in a Tupperware container which right now is still on the back seat of the car because I took her along with it to the pediatric dentist this morning. But the tooth is not going back in her mouth.

Taking a toddler to the dentist by the way is not an easy endeavor. While my daughter was quick to sit in the dentist chair, she was not particularly happy to be confined in it. When it came time for the hygienist to take x-rays, I had to sit in the chair with Meryl in between my legs. Then I had to fold my arms across my chest, grab her little hands and hold her legs down with mine. I felt like I was administering a wrestling hold, and let me tell you, my kid can squirm.

Nothing that anyone did to herat the dentist's office today was painful but for someone who's not yet two, I think it's probably scary to have Dad hold you down while two strangers force your jaw down on a bite wing. She also mistook the x-ray machine for a vacuum cleaner, something for which she already harbors an abnormal fear, so after it was all over she was tearfully crying vacuum . . . no . . . vacuum . . . no. Wouldn't you know the first x-rays didn't take which meant we had to go through the whole damn thing again?

She wasn't much more accommodating for the dentist, who himself couldn't have been nicer. Again his exam consisted mostly of wrangling and hog-tying and, at least in theory, looking at her remaining teeth. If I were this guy, I swear I think I would have just pretended to inspect them to appease the accompanying parent. I can't imagine how many times this poor dentist has been bitten.

Eventually Meryl will go back to be fitted with a retainer-like contraption that gets wired and cemented to her two-year molars. When she has two-year molars, that is. The dentist does color matching and bite molding, so school pictures will still feature a full set of nicely aligned pearly whites. All this to the hefty tune of $695. But right now she's without a tooth.

I am slowly warming up to her new smile, but damn, I miss the one she had. I have bad teeth and I wanted my kid to have good teeth, which I guess she does. She just doesn't have all of her good teeth.

Oddly enough though, she doesn't seem to care one way or the other. The next day when I asked her what she did at her aunt and uncle's house she said nonchalantly Bath . . . puppy. So instead I asked her what had happened at the dining room table to which she replied very simply:

Eggs . . .

Fatherhood - the other F-word

2008-02-29T14:06:00.004-05:00

Why is it that when a mother is pushing a kid in a stroller no one bothers give her a second thought yet when a father is out with his kid in a stroller he gets comments like Is Daddy babysitting today? If a woman takes her kid down to the mailbox to greet the mailman does the mailman hand her the mail with a smile and say Are you playing Mrs. Dad today? I didn't think so. Why is it then that our country can fathom electing a woman for president yet can't grasp the concept of a dad taking care of his kids?

My last babysitting gig was over several waist sizes ago and probably took place while Reagan was in office. Calling me Mr. Mom not only demeans what I do everyday but it also demeans what my wife does everyday. I know we might roll differently than you do in your family, but you know what? When my wife and I sat down to decide what was in the best interest of our household, we didn't consult you. If you see me out with my daughter I'm not babysitting her. I'm parenting her.

Even though it goes beyond emasculation (denigrating fatherhood to a high schooler who snoops through cupboards and eats from the fridge), I am not so much insulted by the babysitting comment as I am baffled by it. Does no one see the grossness in this? It's as though people who say it expect fathers to impregnate and disappear. And people wonder why so many babies are born out of wedlock? I'm not trying to alibi for so-called deadbeat dads, but maybe we need to start pointing the finger at the man in the mirror instead of the one on the Montel Williams Who's My Baby's Daddy episode.

I used to be a member of a list serve for at-home dads until I got sick of guys complaining that they and their kids weren't welcome into certain playgroups. A handbook written for at-home dads even has a letter from a guy offering advice and one of his suggestions is to not get bent out of shape when people call you Mr. Mom. But enough is enough already. It's insulting, yes, but the worst part is that people don't understand why.

The deep end is nigh and I can see myself going off it, so allow me to instead direct your attention to Mom-101 who's said it beautifully in the past. That post features a picture of her first daughter, who has a dad who stays home with her, almost two years ago. If you scan forward in her blog to present day you'll see there are more recent pictures of her, and begosh and begorrah, the kid looks like she turned out okay. Recently Denguy from Toronto responded here to two articles he found online talking about the sordid mystery surrounding at-home fatherhood and I think some similar frustration was voiced there.

Now to the defense of others I will say that although its not how we roll at our house, I do understand a presumption of a father who goes to work and a mother who stays home. That's how my siblings and I grew up, and it worked out well that way. Same goes for my wife. In the handbook I mentioned earlier in fact there's a dedication to the contributing fathers' own mothers who they say taught them how to do what they do. I would concur with that also. If I hadn't had a mother who was as effective as mine was, I don't think I would have been able to take on the role that I am right now.

My mother taught me the importance of things like reading to my child and engaging her imagination. I also credit my mother when I hear myself saying things like Look, it's 3:30 and I still haven't gotten this house clean yet and it's raining so traffic's going to be terrible and your mother's going to be in a bad mood when she gets home and I have no idea what I should make for dinner. I also usually add something like so quit screaming but I don't give my mom credit for that one. Maybe that comes from my dad's side.

You know what though? As annoying as it is to me, I'm not going to change the nation's attitude toward fatherhood in a single blog post and besides that it's now 3:30. It's not raining, but even still I've got to make the bed, get this kid a fresh diaper, and pull out our tax stuff because tonight's the night Elaine and I are going to try and figure out how we're going to put the fuck to the taxman. Come to think of it, this marks the first time I've used the F-word in my blog, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Fatherhood is not just for Michael Keaton anymore.

The day I joined the circus

2008-02-26T21:34:00.004-05:00

My wife has always held a certain affection for circuses, and while when we travel we don't necessarily go out of our way to look for one, we are quick to buy tickets once we spot one. Not counting Ringling Brothers and Cirque du Soleil which we've seen here at home, we've sat under the big top in France, Belgium and Hungary. While the circus in Budapest offered the most as far as animal exploitainment went (ice skating polar bears and kittens doing "tricks"), the Bouglione Circus we saw in Belgium was truly the greatest show on Earth, not just because I got to take part in it but because of the way Elaine and I got there.

Belgium is not really one but two separate countries, one part speaking French and the other speaking Dutch. While my Dutch is limited to the restaurant basics of red wine, white wine and check please, most Dutch speakers also speak some degree of English which made vacationing in a Dutch-speaking country easy. Even still, Elaine and I found ourselves venturing into the francophone Walloon region where I could dust off my college major. Sometimes we even went as far as northern France or into Luxembourg for the same reason. When we were strolling through Namur and spotted the poster advertising ticket sales for the Bouglione Circus at a nearby record shop, we took note of the directions and headed to the store.

Actually the purpose of visiting this record shop quickly became twofold when Elaine wanted to know if I could ask if they sold a CD by Princess Superstar. No matter that neither of us had heard of Princess Superstar before seeing her rap Bad Babysitter on Belgian MTV. Elaine still liked the song. It turns out Princess Superstar is American, but tended to fare better on the UK charts. Listen to the song, and I dare say you'll discover why. I did inquire, but the shop owner, to his credit, did not stock anything by Princess Superstar. Alas.

I had no problem scoring our tickets for the show that day but the proprietor of the record store explained that the circus started shortly and asked if we knew how to get there. We did not, and even with my wife's map reading abilities being as good as they are, I was worried that either my translation skills or my pisspoor sense of direction might get in the way of us arriving on time. And as parking spaces are a rare commodity in old European towns, we were probably at least a mile or so from the car at this point. Lucky for us, a woman in the store was sympathetic to our plight.

"If you need a ride, I'd be happy to give you lift," the woman said in her native French.

"We don't want to impose," I said in my broken French.

"It's no problem, " she assured us, "it's on our way home."

With that, her daughter, who must have been all of nine or ten years old, left the CDs in the pop music section and joined her mother's side smiling.

Now, of my wife and I, I am probably the gutsier of the two when it comes to forgoing stranger danger. I've picked up hitchhikers, I've accepted a ride from a stranger in order to fill an empty gas can and I don't mind striking up conversations in the checkout line at the grocery store. My wife on the other hand will typically not exchange more than three words with the guy sitting next to her on an airplane for fear that he end up wanting to make a woman suit out of her skin while Precious gnaws on chicken bones and the song Goodbye Horses plays in the background. My wife's not a size 14 by the way -- I'm just using this as an example. Regardless, being in a foreign country somehow invites you to let your guard down and when you come from one of the most violent countries on the planet, as we Americans do, you just are quick to bank on a mom and her kid in a record store not being serial killers. So we took them up on the offer.

Elaine and I sat in the backseat. Obviously the mom drove and the girl sat in the passenger seat next to her facing backward toward us for the duration of the ride. The daughter wanted to know where we were from, and when we told her we were American she asked us what the American euro looked like. The mother explained to her daughter that the United States, not being party to the European Union, did not have a euro coin. Then she explained to us that her daughter collected the different coins from the -- at that time 12 but now 27 -- member nations. Bully for her, I thought, for taking an interest in the Union and its currency. After all it was Belgium along with Holland and Luxembourg that invented the concept of the European Union back in the 1950s.

I pulled a dollar from my wallet and offered it to her as a euro substitute. The mother tried to politely refuse the offering, but when I assured her that it was essentially the same value as a euro coin, she let her daughter keep it. Interestingly enough, when I gave her that dollar back in April of 2002, had she traded me for a one-euro coin, I would have gotten the short end of the stick, having exchanged a dollar for what was equivalent at the time to a mere 85 cents. Were we to each have held on to our traded monies however until 2008, that kid would have taken a bath and I would have increased my investment by more than 50%. Ah, the curse of hindsight!

After a brief conversation and for the mere price of one US dollar, the mother-and-daughter team dropped us off at our destination just a short walk from the big top of the Bouglione Circus. Elaine forced me to pose for a picture with the two of them, and I obliged. The mother and I shared that we didn't much care for having our picture taken, but the daughter seemed to relish the opportunity. We exchanged email addresses as is the custom in the post-Y2K era and went on our respective ways.

Once Elaine and I presented our tickets we were escorted to our seats. Worth noting is that while the role of the venue usher has been all but quashed here in America, it's still taken seriously throughout Europe. The person who shows you where you sit expects a tip. Having already been party to a circus in Provence I was well aware of this, but another guy who was from who-knows-where refused and the scantily-clad shapely carny just stood there with her hand out asking, "De la service pour moi, monsieur?" until she reluctantly gave up and tended to other customers. I gave; He didn't. Guess who was asked to come on stage?

It was the last act before intermission and a very animated ringmaster was recruiting four volunteers slash victims to come down to the center ring, me being the fourth. There were four small stools, each about a foot high, arranged in a square and we were to each have a seat on one of them. I sat facing one direction while the guy across from me sat facing the other such that his left side was facing my left side. The other two guys were instructed to do the same so that each of us was sitting perpendicularly to the guys closets to us and each of our backs was to someone else's stool.

Being on center stage in a big top makes for quite an interesting perspective. For one thing it smells different than it does when you're sitting up in the stands. Sure, back in my original seat I enjoyed being surrounded by the aroma of cotton candy and my wife's sugared popcorn, but once on stage I had to breathe through my mouth just to avoid smelling the sawdust and animal dung. Spotlights shone on me also so even though I couldn't really make out anyone's face in the audience because of the glare, I knew that all eyes were now on me, so I didn't want to do anything to make me look goofy. Well, at least no goofier than I already looked sitting catty corner to three other guys in the middle of sawdust and circus excrement.

The ringmaster motioned for us to raise our hands above our heads, demonstrating with his own arms what he wanted us to do. Then he walked around our formation making small adjustments to our arms, basically just making a show and building suspense for the audience. Once he was satisfied with our posture he quickly went back around the circle only now as he passed each of us he put one hand on our forehead and took us by the hand with the other. As a slide whistle from the band played a descending glissando, the ringmaster gently pushed us backward so that now each of us, while still perched on our respective stools, was leaning back with our heads in the lap of some other guy we didn't know from Adam. So much for not looking goofy.

The audience loved this judging by the sound of their laughter and as silly as I might have felt I was chuckling too. So were my other three costars, one of whom made some comment in French I couldn't quite make out. Though socially awkward so far it was a pretty easy stunt to perform. Then there was a drum roll that I knew must have been foreshadowing some show-stopping feat that was going to involve the four of us. Indeed I was correct.

Again the ringmaster paraded around the four of us as the band's percussionist continued his drum roll and watched for his cue. Then, accompanied by the crash of a cymbal, the ringmaster swiped the stool out from under the first guy and tossed it aside. Guy number two? Same thing. Again with three and finally me. There we were, four strangers with our heads resting on one another's laps and each of our weight being supported by the guy whose lap we were laying in. More audience laughter.

Holding this pose wasn't terribly uncomfortable at first, but I could tell from the moment the last stool, mine, was removed from the equation that I was going to be limited in the time my leg muscles would endure this. This slight tension reminded me of a high school gym class exercise a coach would make us do where we had to sit with out backs up against a wall and our thighs parallel to the floor. I hadn't thought to size up the other three guys to see if maybe there was one of them who was less fit than I was, but somehow I doubted it. I'm not one of those self-deprecating Americans that thinks of Europeans as somehow more cultured and better than us, but they are on the whole more physically fit.

None of this would have mattered except that because I'm rather fair skinned and these guys were all three swarthy complected, I knew any audience member could have easily pegged me as the American in the group. I might have gotten away with passing for British, but Brits tend to wear clothes that look more like what the rest of Europeans wears while I wear typical American clothes with the signature Turget circles. To put it succinctly, I didn't want to be the weakest link in the chain whose knees buckled first. It was a matter of national integrity.

Apparently I was not alone in my patriotism. The other three men held out as long as I did. And so after about ten seconds, which apparently was starting to cut into the scheduled intermission time, a handler brought out an elephant into the ring. There was more laughter and applause from the audience which might have served as stamina for my staying power, but lucky for my legs another one of my three allies gave in. Because this formation is only as strong as the weakest link the rest of us lost our balance and came toppling down. Yet more laughter, more applause and then the music cued the intermission.

Elaine and I looked for souvenirs but the only things offered as I recall were children's toys that either sparkled or made noise. Nothing that denoted the circus we had gone to and basically all things that you could have bought at any circus on the planet. No posters to be found which is what we were hoping for. My wife was sure to snap several pictures though.

Once the circus was over Elaine and I decided it was time for dinner. After a leisurely walk down the hill which thankfully was guided by a Scottish woman who lived in the area with her Belgian husband, we found our way to a restaurant there in town called Brasserie Henry located at 3 place Saint-Aubain. Their business card also has a website which I'd link to if it still worked but apparently it doesn't. Oh wait, the powers of the google have led me to discover Brasserie Henry now has its own domain name. You can check them out by pointing your web browser to brasseriehenry.net. This place must be popular because we hadn't so much as sat down for five minutes before a large group came filing in. Then Elaine said, "Hey, aren't those the people from the circus?'

I wasn't quite sure at first but once I pictured these diners in glitter and grease paint I realized that Elaine was right. Indeed several of the performers from Cirque Bouglione were dining alongside us at this same restaurant. Always the table hopper, I didn't hesitate to go over to thank them for a such a wonderful time. We chatted briefly. One woman also spoke good English and was quick to tell me when I get home I should see her son who was at that time performing in a circus in New York. To outsiders, when you introduce yourself as American they often think New York is right around the corner and Hollywood is down the street.

Circuses do have a certain allure about them that I think is due not just to their entertainment value but also to the mystique they carry. I know some would find it unbecoming to travel in trailers and live around exotic animals. Some people I know couldn't get past having to attend weekly meetings with guys in bright wigs and floppy shoes. I on the other hand have always thought it would be an adventure to run away and join the circus. Sadly though I don't think there's much call for a contortionist whose abilities are limited to putting his feet behind his head and turning his tongue all the way around. Nor is anyone I know looking to hire a not-so-strong man. There's always the band.

Did I mention I can play the slide whistle?

Becoming her bad father

2008-02-25T08:09:00.004-05:00

I am quickly becoming the father I had hoped not to become. Sure my daughter and I are sitting side by side. She is standing up on the couch next to me with her arm on my shoulder. She is happy; I am happy. She's smiling, and I'm smiling.

Why?

The reason is because I am typing away on my laptop and she is looking at television. She was never immune to television, but I had hoped we could keep it a treat that only reared its ugly head when she went to go visit family or friends. I am not one of those people who thinks there are quality TV shows for children. All shows reflect varying degrees of badness, especially when it comes to children sitting in front of them. Television teaches children that everything should be entertaining and fun. Then when they are put into situations that are not entertaining and fun they get bored. Compare hours of television viewing and Ritalin sales in this country to other Western nations and see what kind of correlation you come up with. Also worth noting is the number of kids who win national competitions like the spelling bee or science bowl who also don't have a television set in their home.

OK, enough preaching. On with bloggery.

Today Meryl decided that she did not want to eat her breakfast at the dining room table where we normally eats. She wanted to head down the hall to eat her cereal bar in front of the boob tube. Because she already woke us up at five in the morning and my wife's car wouldn't start which caused further household upheaval, I just wasn't up for fighting a battle that early in the day. I acquiesced and here we are. I'm not telling you this because I think it's OK to plunk kids down in front of a TV set. I'm confessing so that I feel shame and maybe will then have the energy to get up and do something else.

Because I do think if I am going to minimize the badness my kid sees on television I should at least limit her viewing to things that have a marginal amount of educational value, we have begun watching some shows on PBS. Here's what I don't like about each of her favorite shows.

BARNIE AND FRIENDS- Why this guy is still on television after all these years is beyond me. Apparently his handlers changed his medication somewhere in the series because he's not as manic anymore and now he's easier to understand than when the show first debuted. Baby Bop also seems to have acquired more of a vocabulary and no longer babbles incoherently the way she used to. Even still this show just seems like one goob fest after another.

CAILLOU - Caillou is an animated Canuck who at the age of four goes around whining like an incompetent boob because he can't do all the things that the big kids can do. And he has no hair! Both his parents have hair. His grandfather has hair. Is there some genetic disorder about Caillou we don't know about? Is it something we'll have to figure out after having put together unrelated clues kinda like on Lost? This shouldn't bother me but it does.

CLIFFORD - Clifford, if you're reading this, it's not you. It's that cocky Emily Elizabeth who tries on every episode to usurp your stardom. If you are asked to do another season with her on the show, you need a new agent.

SUPER WHY - This is by far Meryl's favorite program. For those not in the know Super Why, Wyatt being his Clark Kent name, is one of the Super Readers along with Princess Presto, Wonder Red and Alpha Pig. Sure, they like to think they teach reading and all, but I have some problems with this show.

Why are three human beings running around Storybook Village with an anthropomorphic pig? Furthermore Alpha Pig is really the one who has most of the super power. Super Why just gets most of the credit because he's the one who plays captain exposition for all the slow kids who couldn't otherwise follow the storyline and then wraps up the show at the end. Super Why always provides the moral and gives the shakedown to the archetype, be it the big bad wolf or the witch or whoever.

Super Why does have a catchy theme song though, and I find myself borrowing lines from the show occasionally. When Meryl won't sit on the potty because the kid's been on a potty strike now for months, I'll refer to her potty seat as a Y-flyer which is what the super readers use to get from one place to another quickly. Or yesterday I shouted as I was taking off her diaper Super Meryl with the power to potty! She wasn't convinced.

Alright, show's over. The mush factor in our brains has just jumped three more points. Not only that, but people who complain about the quality of what's on television annoy me almost as much as the shows themselves. The solution isn't a microchip in the TV or, worse yet, relying on our government or third parties to tell us what's good and what's not.

The solution is turning the television off.

Gutter-free politics, please

2008-02-21T12:49:00.005-05:00

Dear Fellow Americans,

As this post hits the press, trashrags across our great nation are churning out the latest scoop on Senator McCain and his alleged relationship with a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman.

I ask you, if you are not keen on the idea of this man becoming our next president, could you please, please, I beg of you, please come up with something other than this tabloidal rubbish of a story to use as your means for justification? If you're unsure of reasons to dislike him, might I suggest his stances on abortion or immigration or anything for that matter that would actually have some impact on our country once he gained a spot in the White House. We shouldn't have cared about Monica Lewinsky and we shouldn't care about this woman either. Really, people, this unwillingness to pull our minds out of the fourth-grade gutter when election time rolls around is getting downright embarrassing.

Speaking of Monica, when all that mess was going on between she and Bill I was teaching at an elementary school in an über-conservative area in my über-conservative county here in Georgia, an über-conservative state. I don't just mean Bush conservative either; we're talking Pat Buchanan theocratic conservatives. Anyway, kids returned from summer vacation and because this Monica-Bill drivel was all these kids heard talked about at home, it wasn't uncommon for me to overhear in the lunchroom one kid giving his interpretation of what he thought had happened in the oval office. Also girls named Monica found this to be an exceptionally difficult time in their lives.

Interestingly enough Atlantans were privy to yet another sex scandal that was going on about the same time that didn't get quite the same coverage or negative reaction A star player of the Atlanta Braves not only admitted to numerous affairs with different women over the previous few years but also fathered a child out of wedlock with one of them who just so happened to be a Hooters waitress. Words do not describe how disgusted I was with the number of parents who wanted a president impeached yet sill sent their kids to school in their prized Chipper Jones Atlanta Braves jerseys.

At least WSB radio had the sense to end the Ask Chipper segment of their morning news program in which a kid got to ask the athletic half-wit a question so Chipper could stumble through his limited vocabulary to muster up an answer. I swear that segment made my ears bleed long before he was shagging the beer wenches at Hooters. Unfortunately for all of us WSB just replaced the Ask Chipper segment with a new segment called Chipper's Diary. It was basically just like the old segment except now a sports reporter was doing the asking. Lame!

Now in reality it doesn't effect me that Bill Clinton was getting blown in his office or that Chipper Jones was fathering children out of wedlock. I just bring it up to show the hypocrisy that exists in the American mentality when it comes to these things. Apparently the Braves' manager and owner didn't care about Chipper either. It didn't effect his game, and his teammates probably got some free hot wings out of the deal.

But back to McCain.

Whether he got money from this woman's clients or not and whether he let her borrow his plane or not and whether he let her smoke his cigar or not, none of these are justifiable reasons to not want him to become our president. If you need some justifiable reasons to vote against him, why not look to his senate voting record by clicking here. Please. Educate yourself before you come across sounding like some immature numbskull who can't get his mind out of the gutter.

Otherwise people are likely to mistake you for Chipper Jones.

Antofagasta : Where happy feet and yankees meet

2008-02-18T12:35:00.009-05:00

On two occasions I got the opportunity to visit Antofagasta, Chile while my father was working with their major electricity provider down there. Chile is a long skinny country spanning the western coast of South America, and Antofagasta finds itself in almost the northernmost tip. Elaine and I weren't yet married but my parents were kind enough to invite her to come along as well which made Chile our first and second overseas trips together.

Each time we stayed there we lived the life of the Anglo expat. We ate homemade empanadas and drank pisco sours. My dad rented a house that was the former home of a previous Miss Chile and it came complete with some fine antique furniture, including a pair of velvety cushioned throne-like chairs. Rumor had it that one of the chairs had been loaned to the Vatican during the Pope's visit to the country in 1987. We didn't know which one, so we made sure to sit in both of them so that maybe we could pick up some of His Holiness's papal super powers. Additionally one of the neighborhood stray cats pegged us as the animal-loving softies that we are and adopted us as her new owners at least for the duration of our stay. We named her Chica.

One of the most memorable brushes with wildlife I had though while in Chile was during a tour my dad had arranged with a local fisherman who had one of his underlings take us out on his boat. We went maybe a mile or so off the coast of a smaller less affluent town called Mejillones. There were six of us in the group: my mother and father, my older niece, a bilingual coworker of my dad's and Elaine and I. Plus the fisherman's underling himself so that made seven.

We all strapped on life vests and climbed into the boat. Somehow my dad managed to bump into the fisherman when he was trying to steady the boat for us to make it easier to get in, and the fisherman fell into the drink. He quickly climbed back up onto the dock and tried to profess that it was not my father's fault. While I don't think any of us said otherwise, we all thought that it was. We managed to all board the boat just the same and were off to what would later come to be known in our family folklore as Penguin Island.

Penguin Island was just that, an island that was home mainly to penguins. Sure, they also had a few seals and gulls because the mor liberal penguins refused to build the fence, but the island was basically a chunk of volcanic rock covered from one end to the other with penguins and penguin excrement. Big penguins, small penguins and penguins of every size in between. I can tell you from personal experience that penguins are loud and penguins smell.

The part of the journey that most stays with me to this day though occurred after my dad's coworker had the boat captain turn off the motor. Once the engine was silenced there was a peaceful and yet awe-inspiring calm that I cannot readily describe. We were floating along the western side of Penguin Island so the mainland was out of our view. There was nothing but ocean, island and us. For a brief moment it seemed like nothing else mattered anyway. Nothing existed outside of our narrow perception.

I don't just mean there were no bills to pay and no bosses to answer to (after all mine was still on the boat.) What I mean is that somehow for those few minutes of my life I had no obligation, certainly no luxury, but most importantly no overbearing external stimuli to preoccupy my thoughts. This sounds silly I know but it was also as though I had no national identity. No Americans; no Chileans. No Bush, no Pinochet, no Castro, no Chavez. We were just seven people out on a boat. Money didn't have much meaning either. If we started to sink, no dollar amount could have bought us salvation and besides, the view and the sounds and the smells were all priceless.

In a sense that boat ride is as close as I've ever come to time travel also. Upon gazing around at the ocean, the island, the penguins, and the gulls and smelling the salt of the sea and the shit of the seals it dawned on me that of all the things around me, we, the seven human beings on that boat, were the only things in the picture that didn't belong. We were that thing that's not like the other. We were the interlopers. This small portion of the planet probably looked the same as it did thousands of years ago with one small exception. Us. We were looking at the majestic past.

My wife and I still talk about Chile sometimes. La Portada, the Shell Boy of Mejillones and Wally's Pub will always have special meaning to us, but at the same time we doubt we will ever return. That's a pity because Chile is probably one of the few remaining places on the planet where the dollar still has a good degree of purchasing power and we found Chileans ranked topnotch when it came to hospitality. It's just that our time on this planet is short and there's a lot of this planet still left to see. Somehow I don't know that I could convince a one-year-old that a nine-hour plane ride to Santiago and then another 3-hour flight to Antofagasta would make penguins worth the trouble.

Whenever I visit the ocean I like to dip my hand down into the water and taste it. A year ago I went to a wedding in Mendocino, California just north of San Francisco and I sampled their shore in the same fashion. As the salty water washed over my lips and down my throat I looked up at my wife smiling and said, "Tastes like Chile."

Chinese cuts, the ancient art of the no scalpel vasectomy

2008-02-16T09:22:00.017-05:00

This is going to be a very special episode of cocktailswithkevin so if there are kids watching, you might want to ask them to leave the room.

No, there are no graphic pictures forthcoming, so there'll be nothing that will require any library staff member to employ the shoulder tap. It's just that I'm likely to forgo clinical terms and instead employ such slanguistic gems as balls, nutsack, and peepee used as a noun. As far as the vas deferens is concerned I'll probably just refer to it by its proper name, as I can think of no four-letter substitute.

Also seeing as how this post will be mainly about my down there and, depending upon how well you know me, you may not want to hear anymore about my down there than you likely already have, this may be an ideal time to go check email instead. If you do not know me well enough to know the history of my nether regions and are feeling left out, you can learn more about it by clicking hither or yon. Enjoy.

Alright. Are those kiddies gone now? Good. Oh, wait. That one kid's still peeking around the corner. Also, if you're at work, make sure you don't read words like balls and nutsack out loud.

Speaking of out loud, in the waiting room at the urologist's office I sat next to one of those people who likes to take advantage of the lengthy wait time by sharing her medical history with anyone who would listen, me included. To her credit she was also quick to talk about what a good doctor the urologist was. I don't mean to be judgmental, but I'm just gonna say it. This woman was what we like to call Ivory Recycling.

When her immediate audience stopped feigning interest she dialed up someone on her cell phone and spoke volume ten to him about it. Annoyingly enough, the call recipient also spoke volume ten so everyone in the waiting room could hear him express the sympathies this woman was clearly seeking. As far as I'm concerned the less I know about someone else's kidney stones the better. I felt like saying Get a blog, lady. But I didn't because that would have been rude, and y'all know I'm not like that.

I had been instructed to bring an athletic supporter as well as the consent form bearing signatures of both me and my wife which I did. The consent form started out with I [write your name] being of -- and then there was a blank line. I asked the receptionist if I was supposed to have written something here such as "questionable moral character" or "low social standing", but she informed me that instead "sound mind and body" would do. So I wrote them words on that paper and handed it to her.

As I was thumbing through outdated magazines trying to pass the time I noticed a patient emerging from the exam rooms making his way to the checkout desk where he was then provided two prescriptions and a plastic cup in which to bring back a specimen in six to eight weeks. Having previously been childless and needing to undergo chemotherapy, I also was familiar with the plastic cup, so I already knew what he would eventually discover, namely that making love to it is about as fun as it sounds. Oh well. By the stunned look on this guy's face, ejaculation was probably the last thing on his mind.

When this guy walked back out into the waiting room I could see that he was wearing sweatpants. My wife made me pack some too, but I left them out in the car. If you're going to be impotent, you ought to look impotent. Get it?

A nurse finally escorted me back to an exam room and instructed me to undress from the waist down, climb up on the table and cover my nakedness with what was essentially a Kleenex the size of a throw rug. This was more than sixty anxiety-riddled minutes after my scheduled appointment time and easily another ten minutes before I would finally see the doctor. I just rested on the exam table alternating between sitting up and lying back. Two large gooseneck lamps shown down on my paper-draped peepee.

Hey, I warned you I was gonna say peepee.

The nurse eventually came back in, put on gloves and announced that she was now going to see, as she put it, how well I shaved. With that she lifted up the paper tarp and rearranged me so she coud fully inspect the surgical area. I couldn't help but chuckle at her phraseology.

"I think I nicked myself. Is that points off?" I asked.

She said that normally it would be but since my scrotum was free of blood I was still okay. Then she disappeared for a while before coming back in announcing that her next task was to clean my scrotum. Note here I'm using clinical terminology only because that's what she said. At the doctor's they say scrotum. They don't say nutsack and stuff like that.

Again she rearranged my man parts and scrubbed down my business with baby wipes. This time she put on latex gloves which is fine with me. I'm not really into latex gloves but whatever. Besides while I'm sure she gave the guy with the cup a good washing too, I do feel more comfortable knowing she changed gloves in between so I don't get his cooties. Before she left this time she got another paper throw rug and tied two of its corners to the gooseneck lamps to act as a screen.

Finally the doctor entered the room and greeted me. I have a good rapport with my urologist because I've seen him several times over the past few years. After Meryl was born, I visited his office just to show her off to him. On my most recent consultation with him he gave me a hug. Not this time though. We were separated from each other by a makeshift privacy screen and I was pantless to boot.

There was some polite small talk and he asked me if we were really gonna do this. I said we were and so the agreement was made.

Much like at the dentist office when the dentist is drilling directly into your nerve endings and he tries to fake some pointless conversation with the false hopes of taking your mind off the procedure, so did my urologist attempt to fake me out by asking about my wife and kid. I was polite and responded but quickly tried to change the subject to the woman in the waiting room who was singing his praises. More specifically I just wanted him to know that people out front were talking favorably about him. I guess deep down I had hoped this would somehow encourage him to make the procedure more pleasurable.

Fat chance.

He continued the banter and promptly grabbed my one remaining testicle so he could fidget around with it and find the vas deferens. Now up until this point my down there medical repertoire included having my nuts jostled, my epididymis squeezed and even a testicle outright removed and never before had I experienced as much discomfort as when this guy was rooting around in my nutsack trying to find the spermadic chord.

I don't know that there's much he could have done to make it more pleasant either. I think regardless of how skilled the physician is, if someone's fishing for such a sensitive part of your reproductive system through your scrotum aka nutsack it just hurts like a sonofabitch. Come to think of it it was kinda like the sharp pain a guy gets from landing wrong on a bicycle seat after having jumped the Grand Canyon. Just not good.

Then came the injection. At least I think that's what came next. You see while I tried to keep up the pretense of discernible conversation with this man, things from this point on just started to blur. I never lost consciousness or anything (try as I might have). It's just that one loses all concern for polite protocol and social graces when his man parts are being knocked about, especially when the person doing the knocking isn't some highly paid woman in black latex saying bad boy bad boy. I've just heard. I don't know from experience or anything.

But really, I remember the doctor saying I would feel a pinch and a burn, the pinch being from the needle going in and the burn being from the medicine entering the site of the injection. While this wasn't nearly as painful as the previous game of Here-We-Go-Round-My-Gonad, it was at this point that I started to feel the sweat bead up on my forehead and nausea churn up in my gut.

I've since read online that some guys go into the doctor's office for a vasectomy and choose to listen to music while the procedure is going on. Looking back, I wish I had chosen this option also. As it was all I got to hear was clamping, snipping and my own slow rhythmic exhaling while I was trying to keep myself from passing out.

Other guys report being in a room with a mirror on the ceiling so they can watch the whole show while it's going on. Kinda like getting to star in your own personal episode of Nip/Tuck, I guess. I can think of little else that I would want to see less than a doctor poking around at my genitals with mom's good scissors. Though maybe this would have expedited the passing out process which would have been just fine with me.

I did express to the good doctor that I felt like I might pass out. He told me to keep taking deep breaths and that if I were to faint, he would still go on with the operation. Hearing that made me feel better. I told that same thing to an endodontist once and he got all surly with me like I was upsetting his schedule or something. With the urologist, I knew that me losing consciousness wasn't going to upset anyone's apple cart.

As it happens, I did not pass out mainly because there wasn't enough time to. The upside of being a uniballer is that a vasectomy only takes half the time that it does for most men. The ballwasher lady had told me that because the doctor was very good at what he does the whole procedure would take less than twenty minutes, but during my previous consultation a week before the doctor had told me that indeed mine would be about ten. I have to admit though that although it seemed like a lifetime while the whole thing was going on, I think from start to finish the time it took to complete the procedure was really more like four or maybe five minutes.

My urologist used the no scalpel procedure that everyone raves about. I've also heard people refer to this method as the Chinese method because it's apparently been standard operating procedure in China now for the past 25 years. A few things come to mind here though.

I am hesitant to refer to any method as Chinese for a couple reasons. First of all it sounds like one of those things we say is Chinese not because it is but because somehow associating it with the Chinese makes it seem more exotic and therefore more marketable. Also for whatever reason the Chinese have often been victims of racial nomenclatures they had nothing to do with like the Chinese fire drill or Chinese red lights.

Mr. Lee, how do you get your shirts so clean? Ancient Chinese secret, huh?

When I taught elementary school and a kid wanted to break in line, they would sometimes engage in what they referred to as Chinese cuts. This was a setup where if one person wouldn't let you cut in line, you asked the person in front of him for Chinese cuts. If he agreed, he would let you cut in front of him with the understanding that he would then cut back in front of you, thus earning you the place in line you had originally hoped for. More often this technique was used not so much to score a place in line as it was just to piss off the person who originally told you no but that you still ended up standing in front of.

Aside from that, it's just silly to refer to any form of birth control as the Chinese method. We're talking about a country that accounts for less than two percent of the world's land mass and yet twenty percent of the world's population. Do the math, people. Saying a particular form of contraception is Chinese in my opinion doesn't really lend to its credibility.

Anyway, enough of that. I'm tired of googling land mass and population statistics. I'll have you know I even opened up an Excel spreadsheet to come up with my percentages. This is because I care so much about you the reader that I want to provide you with accurate information. And also because I suffer from Need-to-Know-Worthless-Information Disorder. OK, back to the operating table.

Instead of cutting into my scrotum with a knife to get to the nutmeats the doctor apparently used a pair of specially designed really really sharp forceps. You can see a picture of the instrument by doing an image search online. I don't know that the thing looks any less scary than a scalpel does. You go home with stitches either way.

After getting dressed I went to the checkout desk to collect my prescriptions and obligatory sterile cup. I pulled the cup out of the bag and asked the receptionist if I could bring the specimen in from home or would it have to be collected on site. My doctor, who was passing by on his way out of the office at the time, patted me on the shoulder and said, "Don't worry. We're not gonna make you do that here." Then the receptionist added that if I wanted I could have my wife do it.

Yeh, right.

Somehow I don't think this falls into the category of for better or for worse. Turning down the bed so I can go home and recoup I knew I could count on my wife for. She's a nurturer and all, but as far as collecting my bodily fluids in a cup, I think I'm gonna have to be on my own.

I drove immediately to the pharmacy to get my prescriptions filled. I tried not to walk funny but with every step it just felt like I had a ten-pound weight hanging from my scrotum. The athletic supporter I was wearing wasn't very supportive either except that the waistband in it was so tight it felt like it was cutting off my circulation. Upon taking it off later that day I'd realize it was a medium which is not the ideal size for a guy who sometimes has to rely on the Fatty McFat expando waistband so he can still squeeze into a 36" waist.

The pain I felt after that was really annoying. Not excruciating. Just annoying. It felt like I needed to make an adjustment only there was really no adjustment I could make that made things better. I tried both crossing and uncrossing my legs when I sat down. I tried the lift. The fidget. No matter how many rounds of pocket pool I played, I just couldn't seem to win. Furthermore I dreaded sneezing, coughing, laughing, shouting, walking, driving over speed bumps or even around sharp corners.

The weird thing was that my right testicle felt like it had sympathy pains for the left and the right one's not even real. It sounds like I'm kidding but I'm not. I noticed this same phantom sensation for the first few days after my original right testicle (the cancerous one to which I was biologically related as opposed to the saline-filled stepchild that's in there now) had been removed. They say people who have an extremity or a limb amputated go through the same thing. It's most unsettling to ache in a part of your body that doesn't exist anymore. Though, come to think of it you have to admit there is some resemblance here.

I also had this queasy feeling that I couldn't seem to shake for the rest of the day. I don't know if it was from the physical discomfort or just because I couldn't stop thinking about the procedure I had undergone. Maybe it's just psychosomatic, but for the whole day and into the next one I just felt like I could have thrown up at any moment. Thankfully I found that pain meds and booze helped alleviate the symptoms or at least render me happy to the point that I didn't care about them anymore.

I had the operation done on Friday at the direction of my doctor so that I could recoup over the weekend and return to work on Monday. I do have to teach that evening, but I'm giving a test and aside from that I'll probably do a lot of sitting at the desk and having students go to the board. Ahh, the joys of student-focused learning!

Vasectomy was a choice my wife and I made after having discussed it ever since our toddler was born. It just seemed like the most cost-effective and relatively easy form of permanent birth control. We are a family of three and my wife and I decided early on in the threesome that we both liked it that way. I also didn't feel comfortable asking my wife to undergo tubal strangulation when that's a much more invasive, expensive and uncomfortable procedure.

I got the vasectomy done three days ago. Sorry I didn't blog about it immediately but I just kinda thought my parents should find out from me directly as opposed to reading it in my blog. After all, I was carrying their genetic code too. I'm not 100% recovered yet, but I feel pretty good and I'm happy with the decision I made. If you're in the Atlanta area and want a referral to a great urologist, shoot me an email to cocktailswithkevin at hotmail dawt com and I'll hook you up.

That's basically it. Not much more to it. This is the exciting conclusion to what has been a very special episode of cocktailswithkevin.com I'll be back to my regularly scheduled mindless banter tomorrow. In the meantime thanks for having placated my ego by reading through all this explicit detail. I promise when it comes time to return the cup, I'll keep that business to myself.

Are you ready for your mystery date?

2008-02-14T13:06:00.004-05:00

Eons ago my wife and I instituted the concept of the mystery date into our courtship. No, not some 1960s Milton Bradley board game with a catchy jingle on the commercial. I mean once a month one of us would plan an outing and surprise the other with the date.

There really are no guidelines. A mystery date could be anything from dinner and a movie to tickets to some event or even champagne and a fireplace if it's done up right. Mystery dates seem to have fallen out of fashion though somewhere around pregnancy and childrearing, but we resolved to make 2008 the year we reintroduce them into the relationship.

In January I decided I should ease back into mystery dating somewhat frugally. Not only does it not make sense to spend money you don't have, but I also didn't want to start off with too big of a bang only to let the art of mystery dating fizzle because I did too much too soon. So I picked a movie that I knew Elaine would like, divvied up a four-pack of single-serve wine bottles into my jacket pockets and headed for the movie theater with my one and only.

We went to go see 27 Dresses. Apparently I did a decent job picking the movie because Elaine loved every sappy minute of it. I thought it to be kitschy at best and . . . well . . . cheesy at worst, but the wine made the blasé acting and storyline a little more tolerable. Better yet, we were able to purchase the movie tickets without having to first take out an equity line on our home.

Barely.

Anyway, this month it's Elaine's turn and she chose Valentine's Day to mark our second monthly mystery date of the year. I have no idea what's in store for the evening, but really being surprised is half the fun. On the other hand, for the person doing the planning, it's the secret machinations that are the most fun. So far all I know is that my parents are coming over this evening to babysit.

That reminds me. I need to lock the liquor cabinet.

My recent escape from Paris

2008-02-12T13:07:00.005-05:00

On my most recent trip to Paris I stayed at the Hôtel du Mont Blanc in the Latin Quarter on rue de la Huchette. My wife found it years ago when we were visiting the city with friends, and I highly recommend it if you're looking for a quaint yet affordable place to stay in Paris. It's in a pedestrian district around the corner from the rue du Chat-qui-Pêche, the smallest street in the city. Notre Dame is within walking distance and the neighborhood is a direct ride on the Métro from Charles de Gaulle airport.

I sprung from the bed that morning at 6:30 sharp thanks to a wake-up call I had asked the front desk clerk to set up for me less than six hours prior, and I quickly gathered my things after having shat, showered and shaved. OK, I hadn't really showered or shaved. Sorry, but no one wants to have to make an extended potty visit during an overseas flight.

Trust me. I've been there. You can't go back to the drink cart which for some reason is always inches away from the bathrooms without everyone staring at you with that look that says You're that guy in 23B who had the audacity to take a crizzap while the rest of us were bumping elbows trying to enjoy our partially hydrogenated Salisbury steak. Take my advice. Go before you fly.

When the hotel clerk wasn't to be found at the front desk I walked downstairs and found him on the lower level in the breakfast room where he was enjoying a baguette and jam with coffee. Upon seeing me he smiled and followed me back up the stairs to the front desk so I could settle my bill.

This was slightly awkward for me because I knew I didn't have enough money to pay for both my room and the phone call I had made the night before to Air France confirming my flight. I barely had enough cash to cover the room. I didn't have any credit cards either. I did have a debit card that was tied to our checking account which had a dollar amount I estimated to be somewhere in the high single digits.

Normally I would feel bad about this but I was still miffed from the night before when I asked the clerk how much a ten-minute phone call would be and he couldn't give me a direct answer. The call ended up being north of 20 euro (that's just over $30 to us impoverished Yanks) so I felt like the hotel was taking me to the cleaners already. Even still, I was clearly going to have to muster up some persuasive French if I wanted to leave the hotel without Inspector Javert as an escort.

The clerk gave me the total and, sure enough, I was short about 18 euro. Now in all honesty I had some cash still in my wallet but I knew I was going to need some airport monies to secure the last-minute travel essentials, namely two bottles of Coca Light and maybe a magazine, so I wasn't going to part with that very readily. Instead I explained to him that I would have to charge the remainder of my balance to the credit card that was used to book my room originally, a credit card that I did not have on my person mind you because I had left it with my wife in the Rome airport.

In the few minutes that followed he and I had an exchange of words that were typical of what two French natives might have shared under similar circumstances. You see, when and American argues with one of his fellow countrymen, he typically thinks himself to be in the right and hopes to convince his opponent of such. On the other hand, when French people argue they typically do so simply for the sake of arguing. They don't go for the win so much as they go for the thrill of debate. I played the game.

His position was that the hotel would spend so much money in fees to my credit card company that it would almost be pointless to charge it on a card. I proposed then that he let me keep my cash and then charge the entire amount to the card, thus minimizing the percentage of fees the hotel would endure. Truth be told, the hotel just didn't like accepting credit cards in the first place and our reservation confirmation even stated that they had a strong preference for cash. I'm not certain of the agreement merchants have with credit card companies but I think that if they require a credit card for booking a room (and this place did) they then obligate themselves to accept a credit card for final payment. I don't know for sure. I'm just guessing.

Anyway, I convinced him that he was holding all the cash I had. He already knew of my penniless plight because I had explained everything to him and asked for his assistance the day before in getting the phone number for Air France, googling information about the airline strike and finding out where in the neighborhood I could take my laptop to freeload someone's wireless connection (in French it's pronounced wee-fee.) This guy was far and away more accommodating than most Parisians would have been in his position, so I really couldn't complain. On the contrary, I appreciated his understanding and his willingness to converse with a non-native in what must have sounded to him like jet-lagged-half-awake-foreigner-at-the-buttcrack-of-dawn broken French. I plead my case, and he relented.

Métro St-Michel was a short walk from the hotel, and I had already purchased the subway ticket I'd need to get back to the airport. The only problem was that for whatever reason my ticket wouldn't clear the turnstile in order to let me in the station. I looked at the markings on it to make sure it hadn't already been used. I tried inserting it several different ways into the machine but every time the turnstile just buzzed and shot the ticket back out at me.

Another early-morning Métro rider saw me fiddling with the ticket and came to my rescue. Giving a quick glance around the station to make sure no one was watching, he then pushed the handicap gate open so I could pass through without validating my ticket. To this day I'm not sure why I couldn't get the ticket to work. I had paid the full amount for a fare from inside the city all the way to the airport and that ticket hadn't been used, but whatever, this guy gave me the courage to do what I wouldn't have had the courage to do otherwise. Hey, I like breaking the rules just as much as the next guy.

For the entire twenty-five-minute subway ride I held on to my unvalidated ticket trying to make it look like I was just another law-abiding passenger when in fact I was a ne'er-do-well law breaker who had already weaseled his way out of a hotel bill like some unscrupulous gypsy. Of the many times I had ridden the Paris Métro, I had never until then gone illegally. As guidebooks would have you believe, when you're caught without a valid ticket, you either pay a hefty fine on the spot or get carried off to jail. I've seen Les Miz enough times to know I'm not cut out for that French chain gang shit.

As my luck would have it I freeloaded successfully all the way to the station at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Almost.

Just as I was about to enter the airport I looked ahead and noticed people inserting their subway tickets into the turnstiles before leaving the station. I had forgotten that while you need only validate a ticket once when traveling inside the city, if you ride the RER in order to get to farther destinations like the airport or -- God forbid -- Euro Disney you have to validate the ticket upon both entering and leaving the subway to make sure you've paid the full fare for the trip.

Shit.

I knew that as soon as I stuck my bootleg ticket in that machine it was going to announce to everyone around that I was cheating the French out of five euro and because at that point I had spent my last bit of cash in the station on Diet Cokes I really didn't have any money left with which to pay a fine. Keeping calm I quickly tried to pre-plan the French vocabulary I'd need to talk my way out of this one.

I should say at this point that while my French isn't bad, there are certain linguistic feats that require a very high level of language ability on the part of the speaker in order to succeed and lying is one of them. I pictured myself trying to play the dumb American who didn't know any better to the gendarmes and in the meantime missing my flight home. Oddly enough fate threw me another bone and I dove for it.

Of the many turnstiles at Charles de Gaulle Métro station there was one that was in the midst of being serviced by a transit worker. It wasn't out of order. Other people were going through it. It's just that evidently a ticket would occasionally get caught up in the mechanism and be rejected so the worker would have to manually let the passenger through the gate. Seeing this as a potential solution for my dilemma, I walked up, casually inserted my virgin ticket into the machine, and it spat the ticket back out at me with a loud buzz.

I pulled it out of the slot and gave the transit worker a puzzled look. Taking the ticket from my hand and flipping it over, he tried reinserting it back in the turnstile. No surprise. The machine spat it back out and buzzed again.

I thought for certain at this point the guy would have looked at the ticket and noticed that it hadn't been validated at the point of origin but he did not. Instead he just gave that Gallic shrug that Frenchmen do when something doesn't go as planned. Then he simply opened the gate with his key and motioned for me to pass through. I thanked him and headed promptly for the Air France ticketing desk without looking back.

I got the pat down a total of three times before they let me on the plane that day, probably because French Intelligence was on to my game. Suits me just fine. They did finally let me on and I made it back to Atlanta with no further difficulties. It's a good thing too. Otherwise I would have had to resort to being one of those homeless people that lives in the Paris Metro.

If you think airplane bathrooms smell bad, you should get a whiff of the Pigalle station.

Ascencia bank frustrates and disappoints faithful consumer

2008-02-06T15:16:00.000-05:00

Because some drug-happy criminal got a hold of my debit card number and used it to purchase pharmaceuticals from an online Filipino pusher I have been on and off the phone with Ascencia Bank for over a month. While I give Ascencia kudos for finally crediting back my money and untangling what could have easily elevated into a financial mess for me, I was quite disappointed with their bumbling when it came to doing something so presumably simple as getting me a debit card replacement.

Ascencia is strictly an online bank based out of Louisville, KY. We do all our banking with them over the innerwebs, and my wife and I monitor our accounts almost daily. When we noticed two transactions from Mercury Drug totaling around $50 we got suspicious and called the number on the back of the card to report fraudulent activity.

I honestly don't know who that number belongs to. I'm guessing it's some clearinghouse for debit cards issued from various banks. Anyway, I know it's not Ascencia Bank because the guy on the other end of the phone, who sounded like he was all of fourteen years old, had no clue how to spell Ascencia. Even after I spelled it for him. Twice. Frankly it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't know how to spell bank, but anyway I digress.

We didn't know which card, hers or mine, had been compromised, so we canceled them both. Unfortunately it was on Friday evening that we caught the transaction, so we had to wait until the following Monday to contact our bank. The service rep was kind enough to hear my tale of woe, inform me as to what should happen and then order replacement debit cards for both me and my wife.

So I thought.

As anyone with an ATM or a debit card is aware, before you get a new card in the mail, you first get correspondence from the bank telling you that the card is on its way and what the PIN will be when you get it. Well, we waited a week and no such correspondence ever came. No cards. No PINS. No nothing.

I called Ascencia and was told to wait a few more days, and we did. In the meantime we were asked to sign affidavits affirming that we were not the ones who had made the purchases. Incidentally I have no way of knowing what drugs the thief ordered but I hope for his own sake he got something good like Oxycontin or Valium and not just some antidepressant or fatty fatty Phentermine.

Still nothing from the bank so we called back. Again. This time I was placed on hold while the service rep called the third-party company that makes and distributes the debit cards to all the happy boys and girls. When the rep came back on the line she explained that for whatever reason no cards had originally been ordered to be mailed out, but she was going to order them now to be overnighted to us so that we would have them in due course. Well, sure enough, a couple of overnights later, the cards arrived via DHL.

But alas, the cards did not work. I tried a number of times to activate them through an ATM and also at the grocery store register where I'd have to key in my PIN. Each time I was told by the ATM that my transaction could not be processed, and my favorite crotchety checkout lady at Kroger just looked at me like I was some deadbeat dad with no money and a soiled credit record. This is the same lady that scolds me for not buckling my kid into the grocery cart seat or for not bundling her up well enough to protect her from the elements, but anyway I digress further.

Sorry, this whole thing just has me worked up.

When I called Ascencia back to tell them my further misfortune, they informed me that while my cards were overnighted to me, my PINs would not arrive for another week or so. Dearest Ascencia Bank, what EFFING good does it do me to receive cards in the mail I cannot use? What do you think I would do with a non-functioning debit card? Sleep with it like some attachment object the same way a kid goes to bed with a favorite teddy bear? Well, I don't. My Amex maybe, but not by bootleg debit card.

After several more days of waiting and making do with nothing but our 12.9% credit and good looks for payment, the PINs finally arrived. Hooray for PINs! Like a kid in a candy store with a blank check, I hurried off to the nearest ATM to activate the card with the newly arrived personal identification number.

No dice.

Apparently my multiple attempts at having previously tried to activate the card with the wrong PIN put a red flag on the card so that now when I tried to activate it with the correct PIN it was too late. I don't know what about this frustrated me more, that I still did not have a working debit card or that I was going to have to once again call my bank. With gritted teeth, I got Ascencia on the horn. The conversation went something like this:

"Hi, my name's Kevin and I just received the PINs in the mail for two cards I had already been overnighted, and I think my card is deactivated because I originally used an incorrect PIN."

"I spoke with you before. Remember, I told you you were going to have to wait for the PINs in the mail before you used the card?" the rep said.

Time out.

The phrase I told you is rather accusatory and therefor needs to be reserved for scolding children. Gentle reader, can you ever remember a time that someone said I told you and they weren't in some way admonishing you because you handled a situation differently than how they thought you should have handled it? I thought not. I worked in a call center. The phrase I told you, much like any use of the imperative form, shouldn't be used in any type of customer correspondence.

Secondly IF this customer service rep told me to wait until my personal identification numbers came in the mail (and honestly I don't remember being told that by her or anyone else), she would have had to have said that only AFTER I deactivated the card unknowingly by keying in the wrong PIN and not before. How wrong was it of me to assume that because my bank went to the expense of overnighting cards to me that they should work with the PINs I already had? Otherwise would that same bank have not also overnighted the PINs to me as well? Am I some super genious or should any monkey be able to figure this out?

Thirdly, even IF this customer service rep had warned me to not try and activate the new cards without first having received new corresponding PINs and even IF I ran out to activate them against her advice just to piss off my bank (I didn't, mind you, but I'm just saying for argument's sake) what damn difference does it make? That still wouldn't have changed the fact that I needed this rep's assistance in resetting my PIN. What good would it have done her or me or any of the other customers waiting on hold for her to take the time to shame me by saying I told you so?

And finally -- yes, I have as many as four reasons as to why this rep was amiss in her telephone behavior -- she did not run me through the security questions Ascencia normally requires of me before they dole out personal information about my account over the phone. She did not ask me for my Social Security number. She did not ask me for my mother's maiden name. She didn't ask me for so much as my account number, which by the way is readily available to anyone to whom I've written a check but at LEAST it would have been some form of verification on her part. She just happily went about her way admonishing this wayward caller whose ID she had no way of knowing.

For all she knew I could have been the man in the moon! Even if her phone is equipped with technology that identifies the number I'm calling from as matching the home number they have on file for me, she doesn't know that I'm not some crazy roommate pretending to be someone I'm not with the hopes of gaining someone else's personal financial information. How does she know my wife and I don't rent out a room and thus share a phone line with the Unibomber?

That shit is wrong.

I desperately try not to cop an attitude when I'm on the phone with a customer service rep for reasons I've outlined here. I like to think that when I had Ascencia on the phone that last time I maintained my calm demeanor. I did make a passive attempt to rectify my situation by simply mentioning another service representative in my response to the surly one with the hopes of getting passed on to someone I felt would be more willing to help out, and, by the way, this worked.

Surly Rep promptly kept me on hold while I assume she bitched to Much More Accommodating and Jovial Rep who ended up being more than happy to rectify my situation with little chitchat much less scolding, and she threw in some good ol' fashioned bless your heart. I don't care if when she disconnected the call Accommodating Rep made fun of me and joked with her next-cube neighbor that I was an incompetent dumbass. She was polite when she had me on the phone, and that's all that matters.

I don't know that I plan on firing my bank any time soon. Ascencia does offer some good rates and in all honesty this has been my first negative experience with them. And like I said, they did credit my account with money I never thought I'd see again which I appreciated. I just have little tolerance for those who can't adequately handle what should have been a simple customer request.

Traveling Tuesday

2008-02-05T07:40:00.000-05:00

Not long after my seventeenth birthday I took my first trip overseas. I was to stay with a family who lived in Seyssinet, a small city near Grenoble in the southeastern part of France, but because the student group I was with flew on KLM, I had a brief stopover in the Amsterdam airport. While the layover was just barely three hours long and I never stepped foot outside the terminal, I still think of this as my first introduction to European culture.

I forget exactly how many other soon-to-be exchange students were traveling with me, probably about twelve or fifteen or so, but we were all saddled with the responsibility of looking after each others' bags if someone wanted to get up and walk around or go to the bathroom. Nowadays I don't know if this would fly even in a European airport what with all the security warnings and not-letting-bags-out-of-your-sight business, but this was 1989 so security measures were lax by today's standards.

Being the non-trusting soul that I was even then however, I chose not to part with my carry-on. If I recall correctly I had a six-pack of Diet Coke in there, and I didn't want some travel mate from a rival school stealing them just for the taste of it. When I had to go to the bathroom, I took the bag in with me.

At this time, most European airports ranked up there with bus terminals or rest areas in the amenities department. Sure the men's room in the Amsterdam airport had toilets, urinals, sinks and even showers, but high school locker rooms during half time must have smelled better than this place. And it was terribly drab. No Sports page hanging on the wall . No soft rock Muzak playing in the background and no signs announcing We're Glad Georgia's On Your Mind or Mayor Shirley Franklin Welcomes You or whatever the Dutch equivalent would be. What it did have though was something I had never seen in an American airport bathroom at that time or even since, an airport worker who happened to be female.

It struck me as odd when I first stepped in. She didn't look up from her mopping, but I glanced at her long enough to know she was a woman. I hesitated thinking maybe this bathroom was out of order for cleaning, but no, this was Europe and asking a woman to mop the men's room while she watched all her efforts rendered pointless by the many haphazard dribblers from across the globe was not unheard of.

She also was Black which, for whatever reason, struck me as odd. Her skin was very dark complected and weathered maybe by age or hard living or the daily stress endured by first generation immigrants, which, now looking back, I'd guess she was. I suppose at seventeen I pictured Europe as lilly White. Kinda like the National Hockey League but with more teeth per capita. What did I know?

She paid me no mind, so I made my way to the urinal and sat down my bag, thus making it easier to go about my bidness. Just moments afterward . . . mid-stream if you will . . . she decided my luggage was in her way and picked it up to move it to one side. She never looked up. She just scooted the bag over, mopped where it had been, and then put it back where she had found it. Slightly unnerved I kept my eye on it the whole time. Did I mention there were Diet Cokes in there?

Anyway, when I rejoined the group I didn't say anything about the woman I had seen working in the men's restroom. In fact, I made a point of not saying anything to anyone. I think a common characteristic of young Americans going abroad is that we fancied ourselves being no longer subject to the rules of prudent etiquette practiced by those back at home. Being adolescents in a foreign and notably more permissive land, we were above such constraints.

Sure we were from the South, but we were Southerners bound for Europe. I felt I should have no more been fazed by a mop-wielding immigrée in the men's room than I would a topless sun bather in Paris' Bois de Boulogne or a scantily clad sex worker in Amsterdam's red light district, two things I later saw on subsequent European sojourns. And even if such things did faze me, I shouldn't let on to members of my peer group that they fazed me. At seventeen that would only be admitting my own chastity and therefore sacrificing my reputation as an upcoming Bohemian libertine. OK, I'm stretching, but you get the point.

A bon vivant with a hint of bad boy was another label I had hoped to invent for myself on that trip, so my next move was up to the nearest bar. It didn't matter that European-based flights originating from the U.S. generally get in well before noon or that, being from a relatively dry family, I had very limited experience with alcohol. Upperclassmen who had made this trip before me had shared their own alcohol-related stories so I knew such an indulgence was easily obtainable. I was right.

The bartender, who was dressed in a black vest and matching trousers, was more than happy to accommodate what was his only customer at the time.

"And for you?" he asked as he wiped down the bar.

"Rum and Coke?" I asked not knowing whether his English was sufficient to grasp either of the two ingredients. For all I knew at the time asking for either rum or Coca-Cola in Holland could have been like asking for buttermilk biscuits with sawmill gravy. But he confirmed my order.

"Bacardi and Coke," he said and went to mixing.

I paid whatever was necessary to walk away with the glass and leave a small gratuity. I'm sure the drink was ridiculously expensive, but this trip happened long before the euro would enter the financial scene and I had only a minimal amount of Dutch guilder. If I wasn't going to spend it in the Amsterdam airport, it would have gone to waste. So I got a little something to take the edge off, or more accurately to flaunt in front of an audience.

I needn't have taken but a few sips before a few girls from the group approached me and asked me what I was drinking.

"Oh, it's just a rum and Coke," I tried to say nonchalantly, "I got it from over there."

Then the questions came all at once. "Did he ask you for I.D.?" "Did you order in English?" "Do you think I could get one too if I asked."

"You have to say Bacardi and Coke," I said self-assuredly. And my fellow travel mates left me for the bar thus following me down the path of impropriety.

Two of them got the same drink as I did, probably concerned that any variation from the tried and true might have not resulted in the desired outcome. Whether they liked rum or Coke for that matter probably made no difference. One girl strayed from the norm and scored a vodka tonic. Sexy, I thought. She proved herself to be even gutsier when she disappeared from the group and reappeared with a stamp in her passport because she dared venture outside the international terminal and through Dutch customs.

It wasn't long after we finished our drinks that it was time to board the plane that would carry us on to Paris. The bulk of our foreign travel and the experiences it would bring had yet to transpire, but I think we all felt like we had already taken that first step toward prospering in a foreign land. Sure, Amsterdam is about as English-speaking as Atlanta and airports, even of the international variety, aren't exactly cultural Meccas, but we were thousands of miles from home and yet still managed to get what we wanted. I, like the other scofflaws in that small group, boarded the plane with a smug smile on my face.

And booze on my breath.

I'm not making any promises because I once tried to have a regular feature on my blog only to let it fizzle out after two brief write-ups, but I'm considering taking time out on Tuesdays to blog about past travel experiences. Any thoughts?

AAA child's passport photo

2008-02-01T14:06:00.000-05:00

Meryl and I set out today to the nearest AAA office in order to get her photo taken for a passport. Sure, passport photos can be acquired just about anywhere for a minimal fee including the post office which is right around the corner from us, but my wife informed me that because we are AAA members, I could pick them up for free at the local office. Huzzah! No matter that the AAA office was 30 minutes away and therefore required almost a quarter of a tank of gas in order to get there and back home. Free is free, and being the cheap bastard that I am, I leaped at the opportunity to scarf up something at relatively little cost.

Meryl looked smashing too. I put her in a white-yet-wintry warm dress and some bright red tights. I know these don't show up in a headshot, but I think it's important for my kid to look good when we go out. You never know when you're going to bump shoulders with a Gerber talent scout or something. Besides, if you look good, you feel good, and that's important for a toddler trying not to look like a terrorist. I even kept a comb in my pocket so I could neaten her up when we got there.

GPS Lady guided us down the three expressways into the neighboring county, and we reached our destination with little difficulty. The AAA office is located in a 1960s strip mall in what they like to call the Northlake Quadrangle. As a side note, I've decided the word quadrangle needs to be used more frequently lest it die out all together, so I'm going to try and incorporate it into my daily speech. I parked the car, combed a few tangles out of Meryl's hair and went in.

"Hi, I just need to get some passport photos," I said to the woman behind the counter while handing her my membership card.

"OK, hers'll just be ten dollars," the woman said to me.

"It's not free if I'm a member?" I asked with solemn face.

"No, hers isn't. Yours is free though," she said smiling.

"But I don't need one for me."

I already have a passport, and while the picture in it is not particularly flattering, I'm not going to go to the trouble of reporting my passport as lost, getting a new picture and paying the fee just to get a replacement. I've thought about it, mind you, but again I'm cheap and even my vanity doesn't merit that much extra spending. What do I care if the way I'm smiling in the picture makes the right side of my face look bigger than the left? So far no one's turned me away from customs either at home or abroad.

I do harbor some fear though that someday a Customs official at JFK is going to look at the picture and shout out where everyone can hear Hey, Pal, didn't you read the sign? It says 'Keep Hoof and Mouth Disease Out of America'! Then I'll have to wave goodbye to my wife and daughter while I get escorted off to quarantine by two guys wearing those weird anti-germ suits they had to wear before carrying off E.T. in a similar fashion.

I broke down and handed over my credit card.

The woman, who couldn't have been more polite, was trying to get a reaction out of Meryl from the moment we walked in. Meryl though is a finicky child. She doesn't like it when people try too hard and can sometimes be quite obstinate when it comes to not giving in to the demands of strangers. I'd like to think this would hold true even if the stranger in question were offering her candy, but somehow I doubt it. Meryl's pride I fear comes cheaper than her father's vanity.

Unfortunately for me though this stranger had no candy to offer so my daughter looked at the woman's camera as though it were an infringement upon her right to life, liberty and the pursuit of doing whatever she wants. At 21 months of age Meryl has ventured into that stage where she is struggling to gain independence and performing simple tasks like standing up facing forward in the chair in front of the white background and remaining still for four seconds while this nice lady takes her picture isn't high up on her to-do list.

The AAA lady asked if maybe Meryl would prefer I snap the picture. Good idea, I thought, but this still didn't prove very effective. I would take a photo right as Meryl waved her hands in front of her face or right as she turned her head to gawk at the decorations hanging from the ceiling or right as her expression devolved from happy kid to crabby kid. She's gonna be stuck with the passport and the photo for five years so I want it to look halfway decent if at all possible. Though, maybe it would serve as a teaching tool when she gets older if I can say to her Here, see how you look when you're whining?

Eventually Meryl flashed a look that, while not overly smiley, wasn't overly frowny either, and she was facing forward. I took the picture while the woman held a toy over my head hoping to get Meryl's attention.

This is what we ended up with:

What do you think? Would you allow this kid into our borders?

Even if she was traveling with this man?

Our operators are standing by.

Two for one Tuesday

2008-01-29T22:12:00.001-05:00

In spite of the fact that my blog is called cocktails with kevin I generally write next to nothing about cocktails. I generally just write about Kevin because . . . well . . . once you've gotten Kevin what more is there?

The phrase cocktails with kevin dates back to my days as an active real estate agent when once a year I would host a party for family, friends and past clients. My wife suggested the name of the party be Cocktails with Kevin. It stuck and so got carried on into blogdom.

Recently I added a a widget down on the lower right-hand side of the screen where every day a different drink recipe is listed. I do this because I care about viewers like you. And because I always feel a bit sorry for those who come across my blog by googling "summer cocktails" or "Easter cocktails" or "cocktails with pop rocks", all of which I've seen at one time or another and none of which are mentioned anywhere on my blog.

I did come across this though on Mostly Muppet Dot Com (gotta love that name!) and thought I'd share because it's booze related. And because I beat Mostly Muppet by ten drunkard points. Click below to try it yourself.

94%DRUNKARD
Incidentally my wife beat me by three points. We were meant to be together.

Passing the mung: a folk remedy for sinus congestion

2008-01-29T13:10:00.000-05:00

Sickness abounds in my household right now and for well over a week I have not been feeling up to snuff. Up to sniff maybe. Definitely up to snuffle and up to snort but not up to snuff. It's that yucky sickness where you don't run a fever but just generally feel miserable because sinuses are congested far into your skull and breathing through your nose becomes a near impossibility. I can tell I'm on the mend now, but for a while it was rough.

A few nights ago I awoke from a deep antihistamine-induced sleep because my body could no longer sustain itself by breathing its own snot. My throat was sore from drainage and general crapitude and my sinuses were stopped up to the point that my nose was no longer even functional. Having already taken Bootafed (that's code for bootleg Sudafed) earlier in the evening I didn't want to pump more chemicals into my body, so I turned to that oracle of oracles that all desperate and overly trusting souls go to for cyber diagnoses, the internet.

Within moments I was directed to a granola-esque website that offered up folk remedies for everything from premenstrual cramps to conjunctivitis. A quick search on the terms nasal congestion led me to a lengthy list of over-the-pantry remedies to supposedly alleviate my condition and help me breathe again. I felt horrible and wanted to fall back asleep so I was open to just about any suggestions. Take note, gentle reader, desperation leads to increased lack of judgment and poor decision making.

Most all the remedies listed had two common ingredients, cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar. Some had more ingredients like horseradish or garlic or onion powder but cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar were common. Now cayenne pepper was a new one on me but I remember on WSB Radio Ludlow Porch used to have as a guest the Right and Honorable Dr. Dick Frymeyer, who would, after listening to callers rattle on about their symptoms, prescribe some folksy remedies, almost all of which called for apple cider vinegar. This website gained some credibility with me because they also centered on apple cider vinegar as a cure-all.

It didn't matter that I had never tried apple cider vinegar for anything outside of a salad dressing or that the aforementioned Dick Frymeyer was not himself a doctor and probably had a moonlighting job peddling snake oil out the back of his covered wagon. The website looked like it cared about my health, and if as many as two absolute strangers recommend apple cider vinegar for something, surely it must be a legitimate solution. Besides, I was desperate to breathe through my nose again, so I headed for the pantry.

My wife is somewhat the gourmet cook, so our pantry is chocked full of many ingredients that went unknown to me before marriage. In fact, if Monty Hall were to step into our kitchen and offer us $100 if we could produce some obscure food item, I'll bet we'd have a good shot at winning. Just off the top of my head for instance I can tell you that in the kitchen we have anchovy paste, fish oil , turmeric and coconut milk just to name a few. As far as kitchen wraps go, we have clingy plastic, aluminum foil, parchment paper, wax paper, and cheese cloth in addition to several sizes of plastic baggies. I don't mean to ramble. I'm just giving you an idea of what all we keep in our pantry.

Because you might need to know that stuff someday.

But the question is whether we had apple cider vinegar and cayenne pepper. Indeed, we did. In fact we have three kinds of vinegar and who knows how many different kinds of pepper, but the apple cider vinegar and ground cayenne pepper were fairly easy to put my hands on.

Like I said, there were several different recipes for sinus congestion cures, most of which called for cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar in varying amounts, so I thought I'd quickly skim through all of them and then come up with my own medicinal concoction. After careful consideration I took a Swanky Swig from the cupboard, dumped in half a teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper and topped it off with apple cider vinegar. I gave it a brief stir with a butter knife and sat it back down on the counter to admire my creation.

It stank.

To a parent of a one-year-old vinegar just smells like a wet diaper. Not only does cayenne pepper not help the smell, it doesn't dissolve in vinegar either. For a few minutes I just stood there in the kitchen staring at cayenne pepper particles swirling around in a pool of apple cider vinegar thinking maybe they would dissolve and this infusion would evolve into a pleasantly fragrant and tasty treat, much like the kind I might buy at a snow cone stand or a Polynesian Tiki bar.

No such luck.

I finally picked up the glass and threw the mixture as far back into my throat as I could and quickly swallowed without trying to think about what I was doing. Like a well-meaning mother with awful tasting medicine I forced every gritty drop of it down my gullet. For a moment I must have had a look on my face reminiscent of painful death. Even congested, I could tell this stuff wasn't too good.

Ass fire. That's kinda how it tasted. Easy on the fire. Mostly just ass.

As far as curative properties go, this junk made my nose immediate start running a little bit which was a slight improvement over not being able to breath through it at all. But I was still overall very congested, besides, now the misery I was experiencing that stemmed from the burning vinegary taste in my mouth would have far overridden any positive side effects this stuff had. It was just horrible.

The next morning I tried adding some cinnamon and lemon juice to the fray thinking that would improve the flavor. It did not,. The new and improved concoctionnot only left a horrible taste in my mouth but also gave my stomach acids a run for their money. Like the pepper, the cinnamon wouldn't dissolve so long after I swallowed this new concoction I could still feel and taste vinegary peppery lemony cinnamon in the crevices of my molars. I could not get rid of it to save my life. These remedies were of minimal efficacy.

Looking back, the webstie I stumbled upon was probably just some platform for people whose goal it was to bring down the drug companies. After all what would the mensches at Merck or the folks at Pfizer do if we all stopped paying attention to the TV ads instructing us to ask our doctor about XYZ pharmaceutical and instead started pulling spices and acetic acids out of our cupboards to cure our ills? Mayhem would surely insue.

I eventually did come up with a decent folk remedy for nasal congestion that I found worked rather well and tasted much better than the one I found online.

Open up a jar of apple cider vinegar and sprinkle some ground cayenne pepper on the counter next to it. Remove two Bootafeds from the blister pack and then pass them over the apple cider vinegar and pepper, making sure none of the ingredients actually comes into contact with any of the others. Now pop the two pills into your mouth and swallow. Chase with water.

YouTube is my babysitter

2008-01-27T10:25:00.000-05:00

When I worked in a cube farm, I had coworkers who spent every off-task moment scrolling through the endless photos, profiles and bulletins they had found on MySpace. That site never held my interest for very long, perhaps because I am further on in years than the bulk of those who make MySpace their space, but I recently have found myself visiting and revisiting YouTube with a similar fervor. I use it mainly to entertain my toddler, of course, but I can’t say I’m immune to the hypnotic trance induced by the campy, kitschy and sometimes downright bizarre things to be found in this corner of the innerwebs.

Who are the people who make these videos?

Like many children, Meryl is amazed by animals. The sheep and the donkey, the geese and the goats along with kittens and puppies and horses and monkeys all make for suitable cybertainment judging by the look on Meryl's face when I click play after finding a video that features one of these creatures. This also gives me an opportunity to teach her new words and expand our conversations beyond what she’d like for breakfast or whether she wants to sit on the potty, two topics that become more and more tedious with each passing day.

Outside of watching creatures from the animal kingdom, Meryl also likes to watch human babies in various stages of pleasure or distress. I think in the past three weeks alone she and I have seen just about every laughing baby on YouTube there is to see. There are babies who laugh at throwing food, babies who laugh at a mommy making silly faces, and babies who laugh at other babies. Some babies have a giggly laugh, while some have a screechy laugh. Still others have what can only be described as a maniacal laugh. It's the ones in this last group that make me fear for our future. Well, I guess when it comes right down to to it it would have to be a tie between the maniacal laughing babies and this one kid who takes a huge Dora the Explorer doll on the potty with her while her mother films the whole thing. Then again, we can only blame the parent for this last one.

When I'm jumping around the internet and come across one of those big tv-screen-like YouTube links where the first frame of the video is visible and whoever orchestrates the site is inviting me to click on the link to view the video, I usually pass. What people think I should find amusing and what I actually do find amusing are generally two different things. Kinda like when someone prefaces a joke by saying I heard a great joke yesterday; wanna hear it? At least on the internet we can politely pass and not be socially forced into hearing a joke we don't want to hear.

With that disclaimer, here are links to a few videos I discovered that Meryl or I found either funny, moving or just plain baffling. Click if you will. If not, no hard feelings.

Laughing Babies

Devil Sheep

Patches the Horse

Woman Dancing to Dora's Theme She needs to quit dancing and clean that room!

YouTube is My Life

Gooble Gobble One of Us

Mall of Georgia Kidgits' play area -- the unspoken rules

2008-01-11T20:57:00.000-05:00

Before my daughter was born my wife and I would walk the mall and I would look down upon the children's play area there. I don't just mean I was on the second floor and the kids' area was on the first floor. I mean I held the play area in low regard. I had a certain disdain for it. Figuratively, I looked down upon it.

It's difficult for me to explain why I disliked it the way I did. I think it had something to do with the slovenly types that sometimes frequent the area. I'm sure if you go to any shopping mall with a kids' playground you'll see them there. They litter the pleather benches with their mammoth diaper bags, their food court purchases and worst of all their own wide asses. In fact the only thing separating the pleather bench from their wide asses is the latest fashion from Land's End or L.L. Bean. It's just not pleasant to look at.

Now that I parent a toddler who requires an outlet for her energy other than banging on pots or flushing the Fisher Price family down the toilet, I've acquired a certain appreciation for the indoor play area. After all, it's warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It comes complete with its own changing table, and if that's too immodest, the changing table offered by neighboring Nordstrom's is not only more private but also bigger and plusher. Indeed the play area is a convenient spot to sit relatively undisturbed and watch the world go by.

To those who make use of the mall play areas, I'd like to outline for the benefit of your child and mine (but mostly for me personally) some of the unspoken rules that apply. Sure, you've seen upon entering the sign that requests you remove your kid's shoes and leave your stroller outside, but I'm here to tell you some of the things that no one else might be willing to tell you.

First and foremost, kids aged five and older do not belong in this play area. Why, oh why, do some people think this is a suitable place to plop their fat selves down and let their elementary-aged children roam free while they cram more MSG into their gullets from styrofoam boxes they got at the Panda Express Chinese place? The few play fixtures that make up this area are clearly designed for the crawlers and nouveau walkers. A second grader, no matter how stupid, is not really going to derive much pleasure from the busy beads or the two-foot long tunnel the same way a 20-month-old kid will.

Maybe some see this as a convenient place to exchange their role of parent for that of a garbage disposal, but the rest of us would really appreciate it if they took their McCholesterol and their child back to the Food Court or better yet out to their car. Either way our children wouldn't have to be trampled by a big kid while we watch a Jabba the Hut lookalike shovel deep fry into its face.

Yuck! Enough said on that. Just thinking about it, I started to throw up in my mouth a little bit.

On another note, I am a fan of private ownership as much as the next consumer, but if you insist on displaying your kid's snack, sippy cup and diaper bag toy out on the bench beside you, I'm going to leave it to you to keep my kid from putting her grubby little paws all over these precious commodities. Sure, I'll tell her half-heartedly from across the way that those aren't hers to mess with or that they belong to that nice little boy and his mommy but I just think that if you bring shit like that into the arena, you're asking for trouble and deserve what you get.

This isn't the rational adults' play area. This is the kids' play area. More specifically it's for the little ones who developmentally just aren't ready to differentiate between things that belong to them and things that don't. You and I are adults so, sure, I can respect that your Cheerios aren't my Cheerios and your free Nordstrom giveaway balloon's not my free Nordstrom giveaway balloon, but toddlers don't grasp that. At their age they're not content to accept my explanation of one's right to property. I'm not saying don't bring the stuff in. I'm just saying if you bring it, I'm going to leave it up to you to referee.

Besides, I don't want to get off the comfy pleather seat.

Alternatively, I am always grateful to the mom who asks Do you mind if I give your daughter some goldfish crackers? I appreciate a parent who realizes it just sometimes makes for less headache for everyone if generosity prevails. When it comes to free snacks, my daughter has little concept of stranger danger and same goes for me.

Another unspoken rule, and this doesn't just apply to the play area, is meant specifically for the other dads out there. Don't wussify your child. Most of our children already have a parent whose job it is to coddle and pamper and occasionally overreact when a typical mid-playground collision occurs. My dear fellow fathers, our children look to us to be the parent who picks them back up, brushes them off and sends them on their way with little more than a pat on the butt.

Today my daughter and I showed up early to the play area and on the parent front there was just me, two moms with their kids, and another dad of two boys. Of the four parents there, the other dad was easily the biggest Nervous Nelly of the bunch. Every time either of his sons so much as looked back at him funny, he was up out of his seat asking them what was wrong. At one point a little girl who couldn't have been more than 18 months old bumped into his three-year-old son. Though the boy seemed to escape uninjured, he waited for the little girl to walk off and then purposefully dropped to the floor and faked his hurt cry.

Almost as though on cue, me and the two moms busted out laughing at this kid's display. He wasn't hurt. He just knew that if he put on a show his daddy would get up out of his seat and provide him with some undue attention. The kid was right.

Part of me wanted to go up to the dad and say to him Dude, you've got boys. You can't treat them this way but since part of the fun of being a parent is silently gloating at the fact that you are better at the job then most everyone else out there, I just kept my mouth shut.

The Kidgits play area at Mall of Georgia (why they call it kidgits I don't know -- is it for both kids and midgets or just kid midgets or what?) has a small playhouse complete with slide. This is a favorite feature for every kid that comes in the place. Because this is a high-traffic area sometimes congestion occurs. Here's a tip. If the kids can work it out between them who's going next, just leave them alone.

I'm not talking about the parent who has to assist a baby who otherwise wouldn't be able to go down the slide. That's different. What I'm saying is that everyone would have much more fun playing on the slide if all these over-protective parents would just get out of the way. As it is it seems like there's always at least one if not more moms or dads playing slide patrol making sure each kid goes down the slide in what the parent presumes is an orderly fashion. Instead the kids look like products on an assembly line, and each one just goes down hurriedly with a straight face so as to not upset the slide nazi.

This sounds all well and good but the fact of the matter is these kids would each get a turn at the slide regardless of what busy body stepped in to offer unneeded assistance. It is true that toddlers don't queue up and wait their turns the same way grown ups do at the Panda Express, but a kid who wants badly enough to go down the slide will eventually go down the slide.

If on the other hand your kid is one of those slide-o-phobes who after getting up on the first step then chooses to just stand there and pick his seat for the next ten minutes, leave him be too. That's his idea of fun. Just don't come crying when my daughter gently makes her way around him to enjoy the slide for the fourteenth time in a row. It's called survival of the fittest. Don't worry. It doesn't mean your child has a deficiency or anything. He's just learning his place. The world needs seat pickers too.

One final word of advice from me on the kids' play area. When the Teavana employee across the way brings out the free samples of his wares, do not leave your child unattended just so you can go taste the latest greatest infusion from the Far East slash West Coast. Yes, I know the goth kid with painted black fingernails puts a sign out claiming his tea aids memory or improves digestion or somehow makes one a better person, but leaving your child unattended even momentarily so that you can go drink some snake oil to boost your chi is just plain wrong. What would you think of a dad who, just for a minute or two, left his kid and hopped over to the Tinder Box to check out the pre-embargo Cuban cigars? That would be bad, right? Well, ditto for tea.

Now on the other hand if a dad wanted to check out the eye candy that works at the women's clothing store across from the Teavana, that's okay provided he doesn't have to get off his comfy pleather seat.

Hey, I don't make the rules. I'm just here to make the world a better place for everyone.

Okay, so . . . maybe just for me.

Ding dong door-to-door soliciting.

2008-01-05T13:43:00.000-05:00

Both my wife and daughter were napping, so I was enjoying a relatively quiet Saturday afternoon today until two people came and rang my doorbell. If you're like me simply hearing a knock at the door or ringing of the doorbell sets off your Spidey sense. Ever since Ed McMahon died, I quit holding out for the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. If I'm expecting guests it's one thing, but when out of the blue someone comes calling, I immediately start to suspect mischief is afoot.

In our home, when someone signals their arrival at the front door our dog goes nuts. While my suspicion is that if someone were to ever break into our house, our Irish Terrier would go running to the doggie toy basket to grab something for the burglar to throw, his bark can sometimes come across as more vicious than his bite especially to those who don't know him. Our exterminator for instance is afraid of him, but then again those exterminators are a unique people unto themselves

Since my first guess as to who a mystery guest might be is usually someone who's selling aluminum siding or religion, I seldom run up and greet him with an open door and a smiling face. Instead, I cautiously tiptoe to the front hallway making sure to try and avoid being seen through the windows by whoever's on the other side. Our door isn't outfitted with a peephole so I just have to stand several feet away and discreetly peer through the slats of the shutters.

This time it was a forty-something couple. The man was thin with white hair and the woman was a heavyset blond with a poor dye job. She was holding a Christmas gift bag that contained something heavy enough to make the bottom sag. Even though curiosity was pushing me to open the door and find out what tidings they were offering, I decided I would find greater comfort and joy back in my comfy Rooms to Go chair. They didn't give me long to make the decision because shortly after they rang the doorbell, they decided to turn around and make their offering to my next-door neighbor instead. Maybe they were turned off by the dog.

Later this afternoon I discovered the mystery couple had left a flier on my door for presidential candidate Ron Paul. I'm not really up on Ron Paul so I don't know how glad or disappointed I should be that I didn't open the door. A brief perusal of his website shows pages labeled Homeschoolers for Ron Paul and Gun owners for Ron Paul. Incidentally why is homeschoolers supposedly one word while gun owners is two? Am I the only person who's bothered by this?

I will refrain from littering my website with my political views on home schooling and gunownership or anything else for that matter, not because I don't have views. It's just because I think if you are a member of the elite intelligetsia that reads my website, you probably are secure enough in your own political views that you could care less what mine or anyone else's are. If on the other hand you're one of those who needs someone else to tell you what you value and believe, send me a tax deductible donation of $20 and I will be glad to write you back outlining what social ills to indulge in and what books to light afire.

Just kidding. It wouldn't really be tax deductible, but I would gladly accept.

What I do wonder about though is what success door-to-door solicitors have with their product. I politely slammed the door on two Mormon proselytizers a couple weeks ago and wondered the same thing. OK, I didn't exactly slam the door in their faces. I shut it gently, but the conversation went something like this:

Me: [struggling not to spill cheap red wine while holding back a badly behaved 45-pound dog by the collar as I smile at two twenty-something Mormons holding a copy of the book thereof] Hey! How y'all doin' today?

Mitt and Moroni: Great, and you?

Me: [still smiling] Good, good. [Door closes.]

They, like the Ron Paul supporters, didn't stick around long before moving on to my neighbor's house. I really wished I could have followed them over there too since the neighbor's English is limited. He can say "hello" and ask "How are you?" when he gifts us fresh vegetables from his garden, but somehow I think the Latter Day followers may have run into a language barrier had they tried to convince him of Joseph Smith's prophetic abilities or that the ancient nation of Zion will be rebuilt in downtown Salt Lake. I'm just guessing.

Someday I'm going to ask one of these guys what their close ratio is. I mean out of all the doors they knock on trying to market their religion, how many people say to them Where can I sign up?

And these political campaigners? Out of all the doors they knock on, how many people say to them Ya know, I was in the middle of an online Scrabble game when you arrived, but since I have limited intelligence and don't have any clue what the presidential race is all about, I'm just gonna vote for your candidate?

Give me a break!

Now, I don't want anyone reading this to think I just pick on religious minorities or the politically zealous. Last year one of the neighbor kids rang my doorbell wanting to sell me cripcraps in order to benefit his school. I was perhaps a little more polite to him than I am to most, but he basically got the same smiling abrupt treatment.

I've taught in the public school system, and I'm well aware of where money ends up. I didn't tell the neighbor kid this, but if his parents want his school to have more money for something, they should look first to the board and the superintendent. That's where the decisions are made and any subsequent monies are mis-allocated or squandered.

Want more shekels for Johnny's classroom supplies? Look at how much money gets spent in the transportation department. Kids whose "behavior disorders" merit their own personal one-passenger bus complete with driver? Ch ching!

I remember the days when someone ringing a doorbell was likely a neighbor offering fresh cookies or a school chum wanting you to come out and play, but sadly those days ended during the Reagan administration along with hyperrealism, mood rings and the final season of Mork & Mindy. Now a knock at the door usually alerts us to the fact that we're about to become the next thread in a blanket solicitation, the product being religion, politics or cripcraps. And I'm not sure which one of them is worse.

Well, between those three it's probably a tie between politics and religion.

I don't know though. Cripcraps ain't all they used to be either.

Remember Creepy Crawlers? Oh, wait a minute. I meant Wacky Walkers. Either way, those were some quality cripcraps.

My Experian credit report

2008-01-02T13:40:00.000-05:00

Today I took it upon myself to pull up my Experian credit report online. I'm in a good situation right now where I don't necessarily have to concern myself with what my credit report has on it. I have far more credit than I can afford and I don't plan on applying for a mortgage or new insurance or anything like that. But since, like many, I've decided on some new financial goals, I thought it best to make sure no one was reporting anything about me that shouldn't be reported.

Because I used to work for a company that pulled credit reports for third parties making inquiries, I have had more than my fair share of experience reading and disputing the reports from all three of the major credit reporting agencies. From what I saw it was rare that there was a significant error on a credit report unless someone happened to be a junior to a senior or vice versa. When a computer sees a similar name name at the same address it could care less whether or not the social security numbers match or even whether one person is dead and the other is still alive. Two family members with the same name should expect to have to unravel quite a tangled credit history at some point in their future, but anyway I digress. My point is that because I'm very familiar with the whole process, I don't share the mass paranoia that many do when it comes to identity theft or credit histories.

Anyway, here's what I found: Everything looked hunky dory with a few minor exceptions. An auto parts store was still reporting an account as open and unused for the past eight years, and it probably is still open, but since I don't have any use for it, I've disputed it with the hopes that the result comes back as closed. If not, I'll have to take it up with the merchant itself.

I know there are credit report nazis out there that will shout at me that if the account is showing a zero balance that I should not mess with it and instead just let it continue to show as open, but I don't buy that. The last thing I need is for a tech-savvy employee of that company deciding he's going to get charge happy on my credited nickel and make my life a living hell. I would much rather sacrifice a few points on my credit score than put myself at that kind of risk.

Additionally an employer from several years ago was still being listed as my current employer which frankly wouldn't have bothered me so much except that the employer's name was misspelled. I know it's shallow and pedantic of me, but I have little tolerance for that. It's G-W-I-N-N-E-T-T period. No E at the end, in spite of the fact that when I was growing up a sign along side Hwy 29 in Lilburn, GA said Welcome to Gwinnette [sic] County.

It's Gwinnett. Like Button Gwinnett who incidentally was one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. His signature to this day is one of the most valuable simply because, unlike other historical signers like Thomas Jefferson or John Adams, Button Gwinnett didn't throw his John Hancock around too much. This is possibly because he died relatively young at the age of 43. He died of complications after being the losing party of a duel. I forget who with though. Georgia public school doesn't ask you to remember that much unless you want extra credit. I seldom shot for extra credit.

Which brings us back to the credit report.

Rooms to Go's banking partner HSBC/RS still shows an account that is over ten years old. Again, it says the account is paid on time in full, but why is that shit still showing on my report? Most of that furniture didn't even survive into my marriage, and that wasn't to happen for another four years after I bought the stuff and I've been married seven and a half years now!

I wouldn't be concerned except that I had a negative experience with Rooms to Go back then and it's left a bitter taste in my mouth ever since. I don't like a company that makes you jump up and down and scream in order to get them to follow through on their own promises. Any asshole customer can make a scene in a store, but it takes a certain degree of social engineering to cause a scene and get the desired result. Been there. Done that. Got the couch, end tables, coffee table, two lamps and an arm chair. The arm chair survives to this day.

The only other thing on the report that irked me was in the personal information section. I used to think the aliases and former addresses didn't matter until I got a few calls at the aforementioned job from people who wanted desperately to dispute inaccuracies in that section of their credit report. One was a woman who was about to be appointed judge and the other was from a man in the federal intelligence industry. Both of their concerns were the same. They didn't want a faulty address showing because their being hired depended on the employer viewing them as honest and forthcoming. An undisclosed address could have been looked at unfavorably.

My bootleg address was weird because it in no way resembled any place I had ever lived before. Furthermore, I mapquested the address and it was in no place I ever would have lived. I wouldn't have wished such a reside on my worst enemy in fact. Sure, I like living on the edge from time to time, but to live in a home where the neighbor's first language is gunfire? No thanks. The last thing I need is to wake up to the sound of someone next door shouting Say hello to my little friend just before riddling my newly purchased Rooms to Go furniture with bullet holes.

Again, I doubt the shady address would really cause me too much to worry about. I'm not likely to be appointed judge or be offered a job where I get top secret phone calls on my shoe phone anytime soon, but disputing it gives me something to do. If someone is pulling up my personal information, I want it to be right.

I'm well aware of the fact that I only pulled one report when there are three credit reporting agencies, Equifax and TransUnion being the other two, but you only get to view a report for free once a year from each of the agencies. If you log onto annualcreditreport.com the site gives you the choice. Point to whichever one you want (or all three) and it comes to your computer screen abzolutely free. I'll get one from another bureau four months down the line, but in the meantime this one should tide me over.

As for that bootleg address, it still puzzles me. Where did it come from and how did it get listed on my report? Part of me wants to go knock on the door and see who answers. Would I be greeted by a knife-wielding gang leader? A unibomber? A Mitt Romney supporter? Possibly all of the above?

What if when I showed up at the door I was greeted by my doppelganger and his entire place was furnished with my old Rooms to Go furniture?

Who knows?

I am a husband and a father now so I cannot go flying into the face of danger the way I used to.

I could always google the address though.

Our Piper Heidsieck who art in Kevin

2007-12-31T22:26:00.000-05:00

Blogger announces Hindi transliteration? The hell? I'm just not down with that. Sorry.

What I am down with right now is some tasty Piper Heidsieck that I'm enjoying with my spouse before checking out on this final day of 2007.

At the time of this writing it's just a little before 10:30, which means the missuz and I will be retiring a good hour and a half before midnight. Oh well. I'm old and fat and can't stay up as late as I used to, nor can I remember the last time I was up at midnight on New Year's Eve. Call it Jungenheimer's Disease. I don't care.

What?

Actually I do remember that New Year's Eve that I was up at midnight. My wife and I were in the emergency room at the Naples Community Hospital in Naples, FL because she had ingested nuts . She's allergic to almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, basically all nuts other than peanuts -- they're not really a nut -- kinda like a fauxnad. She's not allergic to that either.

Oh yeh!

There is little sadder than some overworked orderlies counting down the last seconds of the year before they start their twelfth hour of a fourteen-hour shift. Even the noisemaker I heard that night sounded weak. No New Year's Rockin' Eve in the ward less traveled, let me tell you.

Anyway, I've made my resolutions and have found peace with the poured so I won't be long.

If you've stumbled my way in the year 2007, close out your browser, find someone to kiss and enjoy the final moments of the year. If you've found me on the first day of 2008, let me congratulate you on having pried yourself off that toilet and found your way to the site that's home of champagne wishes and White Trash caviar dreams. Indeed there will be a recipe for my sister-in-law's White Trash Caviar, but I'm just not up to it right now.

Did I mention that I'm old and fat? And it's after ten.

Happy New Year.

Insomnial musings

2007-12-27T23:09:00.000-05:00

Earlier today I was dead tired and couldn't wait for my daughter to lie down for a nap so I could do the same. Unfortunately our evil cat (his picture on mycathatesyou.com) foiled that plan by constantly trying to either curl up on my neck or, after I attempted to avoid him all together by pulling the covers up over my head, wriggle his way under said covers to stick his nose in my ear. Most annoying.

Now for whatever reason it's 11 o'clock at night and I can't sleep. Funnily enough my wife doesn't respond positively when I roll over and whisper in her ear all the random thoughts that I'm having when I can't sleep, so I'll just humor you with them. Lean closer.

Closer still.

I make no promises as to any rhyme or reason to all this. These are truly just some things I was thinking of as I was lying in bed.

First a quick thanks to my sister-in-law and mother, both of whom took pity on my feet after reading my blog and gave me foot scrub and gel socks respectively for Christmas. The scrub is nice because it doesn't have a girly smell, and the gel socks rock because when I walk around with them on I feel like I'm stepping in goo only its a good feeling goo. Plus, the socks aren't made to cover your entire foot, just the heel and around your ankle. In spite of the fact that my toddler referred to them as tights when she saw me putting these on, they really are a unisex item. They're a bit macho in fact. Kinda like that super hero who wore the wrist bracelets. Who was that? Oh yeh, Wonder Woman. Well, never mind. They're not really like those bracelets. They're way cooler.

In the meantime, I've thrown away the foot shaver not because I won't ever use it again but because my old one's rusted. I'll probably use some Christmas monies to go get another one. Even as hardcore as I am, I won't bring myself to use rusted gear.

I had a most bizarre dream last night. In it I was supposed to go meet someone I used to know about a real estate deal. This particular someone died almost ten years ago, which incidentally was long before I started doing real estate. I wasn't sure where the house was and I was driving through this neighborhood at night and couldn't see the houses very well. I finally came across a 70s looking split-level with wooden stairs leading up to the front porch. I knew this was the house because a blown up copy of the picture I used for my business card (it's on the Flickr badge on the right side of the page) was hanging on the mailbox.

When I got in, the guy wasn't there but his roommate was. The roommate was a kid who lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. These two people most likely wouldn't have known each other in real life, but in my dream, which ended rather abruptly, they were roommates. Just weird.

On a somber note, it just occurred to me while I was typing this out that while I do know for certain of only one person who died since I got into real estate five or so years ago, there is likely at least one other if not two or even three people I worked with who may have also died. One person I'm thinking of was terminally ill at the time I met with her and her husband to talk about selling their home, and the other two were an elderly couple. When I say elderly I mean elderly as in he was 87 and she was 93. Whenever I stopped in to visit with them the ninety-three-year-old woman would refer to me as her ray of sunshine. On two occasions the husband fell asleep while I was over there chatting with them. Not really surprising I guess, huh?

My wife and I enjoyed a movie from Netflix this evening which we watched in bed on the laptop. The movie was Flannel Pajamas and it got very mixed reviews from other viewers so I didn't know what to expect. I really liked the film but my wife wasn't at all crazy about it.

Netflix allows you to rate movies you've seen with anywhere from one to five stars. This movie had an average customer rating of 2.6 stars but of "viewers like me" it got 3.5. That Netflix keeps a profile of me that is detailed to the extent that they feel they can compare me to strangers is a little bit creepy and often I find the "viewers like you" ratings are way off base, but in this case I agreed. In fact, I'd give the movie four stars.

I do face a small dilemma though because my wife most likely would have given the movie only two or maybe even just one star. Since she and I generally watch movies together part of me feels like I should give the movie a crappy rating, or at the very least compromise and rate it three stars. In all honesty though, I'm not likely to do either of those things. I'll probably give it the four stars I think it deserves. That's what I usually do. If I write a review of it though, I'll make note of the fact that my wife thought it sucked.

On a side note, of all the 1311 movies I've rated with Netflix I've only given 131 five out of five stars. That's perfectly ten percent. Weird huh? That it's exactly ten percent I mean. Weird kinda like that dream I mentioned earlier.

Here are a few of my favorite five-star movies to add to your rental list:

Little Children
The Mudge Boy
The Corndog Man
Hard Candy
Everything is Illuminated
The Chumscrubber
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Fat Girl
Dummy
The Station Agent

Some of those are funny; some are dark; some are more mood pieces. A good portion of them my wife would think are crap. But I don't feel guilty because also rated five stars in our cue is Sex in the City: Season 4. Whaaaaatttt? It was a good show and all, but five stars?

Miranda was my favorite character, but I was disappointed when the actress who played her came out of the closet. Same goes for Jodie Foster. The fantasy was just ruined. I guess I still have a chance with Sarah Jessica Parker though.

Really, what's with those three-name celebrities? Anthony Michael Hall? Edward James Olmos? Nat King Cole? Julia Louis Dreyfuss? Please, celebrities, pick two names and stick with them. Unless the name has Spears in it. Then just please do us all a favor and fade away.

In the last three weeks, a 16-year-old coattail riding celebrity gets knocked up by her nineteen-year-old boyfriend and the first woman elected to lead a Muslim nation state was murdered. Which one of these two women will the American public remember two weeks from today?

We did not put up a Christmas tree this year because we feared fragile ornaments and hooks would be too tempting for a toddler. My wife did a great arrangement of some Christmas things on the mantle though and we also have an indoor-outdoor resin cast of Buddha that we like to put a Santa hat on this time of year. We're not Buddhists or anything, not that it should matter to you. I just happened to see the thing at Target one day and thought it'd look cool in our living room. Santa Buddha comin' down the chimbley tonight.

Other religious articles we have in our home are a replica of the infant Jesus of Prague, a novena of same and a lunch box with Gonesh on it.

Oh yeh, and the Sesame Street Giggle and Go Garage.

Resolutions for the next solar revolution

2007-12-26T15:24:00.000-05:00

I foster enough guilt throughout my daily life without piling on the self loathing that comes from not having achieved hastily made resolutions for a new year, but since tradition dictates such behavior, and frankly, last year I made so such undertakings and have come to regret the decision, I’ll humble you the reader with a few promises I have made to myself for the upcoming 2008.

Please note that these are not decisions I’ve made to you per se. As such these are not things to be thrown back in my face when, if again I am struck by tradition, I choose to forego these pursuits because other more pressing responsibilities take priority (other responsibilities may include but are not limited to: husbandry, fatherhood, and la joie de vivre.) I am but one man and am at times stretched thin by the multiple and sometimes contending roles that I play throughout my life so I can’t promise to anyone including myself that I will respect any of these declarations for any longer than perhaps – oh, I don’t know – let’s just say the night of January 16^th.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I want more than anything to do a better job of telling those around me how much better my life is because of them. That’s resolution numero uno, say thanks to people who rightly deserve it. While I fancy myself a very thankful person, I don’t do a sufficient job of telling those to whom I’m thankful that I’m thankful. Family and friends alone account for the majority of my gratitude and yet while I am quick to tell my spouse at the end of the day how someone in our social circle helped make my life better, I seldom tell that particular person. That’s wrong. Our being thankful falls on deaf ears if we don’t tell the people for whom we’re thankful that we’re thankful. On the other hand, if we tell them we’re thankful, they’re more likely to continue to do our bidding. And isn’t that what life’s all about?

I’m not schmaltzy, I’m not syrupy, and I’m not generally the type people would refer to as sentimental, but what if everyone who read this blog entry took it upon themselves to stop and say thanks to someone -- one person, mind you -- who makes life on Planet Earth just a little bit more tolerable? I’m not saying to do it. I don’t care if you do or if you don’t. I’m just asking that you contemplate what goodness would come about if you were to take the time to express gratitude to someone who deserves it. Again, my life does not revolve around your expression of gratitude. I’m just throwing that out there for all of cyberdom.

Another undertaking I need to look into is doing a better job of watching what I eat. While I’m not at my fattest, I’m certainly not at my thinnest, but more pressing is the fact that I’m approaching the age when calories (especially the empty variety found in wine) aren’t burned as quickly and tend to hang around in the body for longer periods of time until they can be joined by more of their friends and come together to make fat. I remember the days when I could sit and down worthless foodstuffs by the metric butt load with little repercussion, but those days are long gone. The times they are a-changin’.

Just as my waistline seems to fluctuate back and forth between too much and way too much, so goes my spending money from comfortably cush to a small fraction of my average daily balance if you catch my drift. While I’ve struggled at times, I’ve never been destitute. Likewise there have been times when financially I was sitting pretty. But it’s always been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. You’d think by 35 I would have learned to spend and save more stably but for whatever reason I’ve always laughed in the face of moderation like a former Buddhist monk with a dishonorable discharge. Dining out is both a money pit and a calorie pit, so if I can curb that one, I’ll be in good shape.

You know, I’ve never made resolutions before, so I’m not quite sure how it’s done. Am I supposed to come up with several pages of resolutions or are these three enough? It seems to me like the more I come up with the harder a time I would have keeping track of them and the more likely I’d be to let them each fall to the wayside, so maybe I should just stick with these three. Yeh, I’m gonna just stick with these three.

And another thing, I know that the first day of Qwahhhnzuh (I always opt for the more traditional spelling) isn’t generally when people make resolutions for the New Year but when it comes to self improvement what good does it do for us to limit ourselves to the Gregorian calendar? What does a sixteenth century pope know about my hectic schedule anyway? I give that a gyahh and an oh brother!

Merry Crimmas

2007-12-25T14:23:00.000-05:00

Time is a precious thing on a day that demands traveling over the meadow and through the woods to both parents and in-laws with a dog, new tube of badly needed foot scrub and ample amounts of stuff in tow, so I'll make this brief. Merry Christmas to all including those who have not yet accepted Santa as their lord and savior. My yuletide celebration is only half over and already it's been wonderful. The only thing that beats celebrating Christmas at the parents' is Christmas as a parent. Meryl, thanks to you and your mom for making Dad's Christmas incredibly merry and bright. To everyone else, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

What became of Grandpa George?

2007-12-18T14:08:00.000-05:00

Last night around four in the morning, I awoke from some weird dreams in which I went to bed with several of our friends. I don't mean I had sex with them (if you're a friend reading, sorry for the suggested visualization.) I mean sort of like a camping trip or a slumber party or something, Elaine and I crawled into bed with some of our friends and went to sleep. The friend next to me was wearing a frumpy nightgown. Weird.

Anyway, the first image that popped into my head of several people in the same bed was from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when Charlie's grandparents are all bedridden in the living room of their humble pauper's apartment. Actually all the grandparents weren't in the same bed. One set of grandparents slept in one tiny bed as I recall and the other slept in another. These people ate cabbage stew for dinner. It's not like they had a Wamsutta king size or knew their sleep numbers or anything.

There was Grandpa Joe of course, who ends up going to the chocolate factory with Charlie, and Grandpa Joe's wife was Grandma Josephine. I don't know for certain, but something tells me these were Charlie's mom's parents. Then there was Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. Likewise I think these were Charlie's dad's parents though I'm not sure. It's been forever since I've seen the movie and, as best as I can remember, it doesn't really go into a lot of backstory about Charlie's life.

Did Grandpa George ever have any lines? I know it's an odd question and all, but this is what I laid awake trying to remember. Did Grandpa George . . . have any lines? I honestly can't remember if he did or not, and while I did manage to eventually fall asleep without resolving the issue, the question still weighs on my mind. Was it a speaking role? Or did he simply lie there in the bed and just re-act to the other actors?

Aside from Grandpa Joe who we see in almost the whole movie, I don't think we see the grandparents except in a couple of scenes, do we? Let's see -- there's that scene where Charlie gets home from school, then there's that scene where the old folks are listening in on the wireless and hear that all the golden tickets have been found and then there's that scene where Charlie comes bounding in like his mom forgot to give him his hyper medicine or something saying he found the last golden ticket and that it's not bootleg. If there were lines written for Grandpa George it would have likely been during one of these last two scenes I think.

The Internet Movie Database claims that the role was played by Ernst Ziegler and that sadly it was his last role before dying of emphysema in 1974. Sadder still is that his name apparently didn't even appear in the credits of the film. He doesn't have much of a rap sheet with IMDB either so he'll likely best be known to most for his roles in such gems as The Naked Countess and Naughty Knickers, both German movies that came out in 1971 and 1970 respectively.

It really only just dawned on me that of all the things I could lay awake thinking about (predeterminism vs. free will, life on other planets, Cousin Oliver's disappearance from The Brady Bunch) whether an uncredited actor had any lines or not in a film is probably one of the most obscure. But did he have any lines? I don't know that I'm going to clog up my Netflix queue with some 1970s dwarfsploitation to find out, so someone is just going to have to tell me.

Besides, those Oompa Loompas? A little on the scary side.

Too much stuff

2007-12-12T14:58:00.000-05:00

For the most part, I do not find happiness in stuff. Sure, I own things that bring me pleasure. I just don't like stuff for stuff's sake. I think that stuff equals stress. The more stuff you have; the more stressful your life becomes.

Think about it. If you have a lot of stuff, you then have to find a place to put the stuff. If you have too much, you have to step around the stuff. When people come over you have to say to them Careful, don't break my stuff. The momentary happiness that comes when acquiring new stuff quickly fades when it is overtaken by the desire to have yet more stuff. And there is always more stuff to be had.

I hold these truths to be self-evident regardless of the season but Yuletide seems to always be the time of year when I think about them most. Some people give gifts at Christmas; others just give presents. To me a gift is something the receiver wants or at least likes once he has it whereas a present is merely something the giver wants to give. He just presents it. Really, I don't think the giver wants to give it so much as he feels like he has to give it.

Here ya go! Here's some stuff. Not sure if you really want the stuff or not, but now I can check your name off the list of people I gotta get stuff for. Thanks for alleviating my guilt by receiving this stuff.

I know there are some people out there who love stuff. They simply adore stuff. When asked what they want for Christmas they'll reply with a big grin More stuff please! Many feel the one with the most toys wins and no amount of stuff is good enough if you can point to someone who has newer, better or just more stuff than you. Let the stuff race begin!

Another thing that gripes me is this rampant commercialism in the air this time of year. So many people suffer from C.C.S. or Constant Consumer Syndrome. It's not just adults. It's kids too.

In my late teens I worked at a major toy store chain over three Christmas seasons. During that time I saw holiday consumerism at its most evident. The mania usually starts with some craptacular television commercial advertising a toy that's equally lame. Because the kids depicted in the commercial smile like they've just been given a lifetime supply of kiddie crack, child viewers think they simply must have the product in order to go on living. They convey this misthought to their parents who further validate the falsehood by vying to secure the item for their kid.

On more than one occasion I saw a parent who was driven to tears because they were faced with not being able to provide for their kid the latest fad toy. Can you imagine a grown man crying because he can't get his hands on a Tickle-Me Elmo or a Cabbage Patch or a Baby-Poops-Herself doll. I've seen it, and it ain't pretty.

I kid you not when I say that one December I received a phone call from a woman who said to me Where are the Baby Oopsie Daisies? I know you people have them hidden in that store somewhere. Where are they? You should have heard the venom in this woman's voice. She didn't even preface with hello. What's more, Baby Oopsie Daisy was a piece of crap. Most of them got returned defective by the end of January.

Teddy Ruxpin was another holiday ripoff. Remember him? He came out back when parents first started relying on animatronics to read to their children. His price tag fell from $99 to $25 within a year. Why? Because when it came time for storytime, Teddy Ruxpin, that late-80s reason for the season, failed to deliver. He looked good in the commercial though.

I am not a Negative Nelson. I do enjoy receiving gifts, and I enjoy giving gifts even more. I just have a few cardinal rules when it comes to spreading the Christmas cheer via brown paper packages tied up with strings. These are a few of my most pertinent things:

Generally speaking, I feel uncomfortable telling someone what I want for Christmas. If I want something for myself I buy it. If I don't buy something I want, it's because I can't afford to buy it, and if I can't afford to buy it, I really don't feel comfortable asking you to buy it for me.

Often I think the most prized gifts are those where the giver said at the time I just thought of you when I saw it in the store. These aren't things a person would pick out for himself, but they hold meaning because whenever the receiver looks at them, he knows someone thought of him when they were purchased. Clothes often fall into this category. For this reason, I seldom return gifts unless they happen to be the wrong size. For me, cashing in a gift to get something else takes away from the joy of receiving it.

I am fortunate in that I was born into a family of great gift givers and later married into a family of great gift givers. If you are reading this and are from either of these families, please keep the gifts coming. If you are not related to me and are reading this blog (by the way, I think you people now number into the high single digits) cash is always welcome. I like to invest in coal this time of year.

For another view on stuff, click here. I found that after googling "more stuff."

Kevin' Bootleg Peppermint Patties

2007-12-11T20:10:00.001-05:00

When I first blended belongings with the woman who is now my wife, I found myself surrounded by new kitchen toys I had never before played with. I'm talking about a vegetable peeler, an apple corer, a basting brush, a nice mixer, a cheese grater, parchment paper, and cutting boards just to name a few. In return she got a collection of 1980s Smurf figurines and a tattered chair from Rooms to Go. Isn't cohabitation grand?

With all these new accouterments I took to baking. I especially enjoy making cookies or cakes or pies or brownies or any other confection that I can polish off while sitting on the couch and watching the Tyra show. Just kidding. I hate that show, but I could maybe turn the sound down and still eat the cookies. She is kinda hot. And Kevvie Monster loves cookies.

My mother made candy when I was growing up, but for the most part my family was not a baking family. I do recall my sister baking once when she was about six. Of course, this would have been when she made a yellow cake in her EasyBake oven, which incidentally ran off a regular light bulb as best as I can remember. I think she was nine by the time it was finished cooking.

Yesterday I popped into my parents' house to see if they had any Crisco. When I told them I found a recipe on joyofbaking.com for peppermint patties, my father said, "Why don't you just go out and buy a bag?" Whatever. That's like telling somebody who likes to fish Why don't you just run out to the Kroger and pick up some fillets? Clearly my father did not know the joy of baking.

My mother thought for a second and then said, "We have some, but it might be kinda old."

"Like how old?" I asked.

"Well, remember when your sister had that EasyBake oven?" she said.

Anyway, I trekked to Kroger to get a new can of Crisco.

I have mixed success with recipes I get off the internet. All too often I find a recipe that for the necessary ingredients might list only flour, eggs, sugar and butter and then go on to say in the directions Now gradually fold in the creme fraiche and the pumpkin puree. Where do these mystery ingredients come from?

Other times the person submitting the recipe has the math skills of a three-year-old. If the recipe calls for one cup of sugar, the directions will say to use half the sugar for the dough, half for the filling and then sprinkle the remaining three tablespoons over the dessert before putting it in the oven. Unfortunately I never discover these discrepancies until I'm elbow-deep in flour and egg white so I spend the next hour trying to look up alternative formulas on the internet to figure out what the correct ingredients and proportions are. Very frustrated.

Also sometimes people who upload recipes to the internet do so hoping when you read the ingredients you'll be impressed with the contents of their pantry. If you've ever pulled up recipes online you know what I'm talking about. Knowing full well you don't keep this stuff in your kitchen, they'll list obscure ingredients just hoping you'll run out to a specialty store and buy them. I'm not going to drive out of my way and spend half my paycheck so I can get olallieberry extract or flaxseed paste, much less ask the guy at the meat counter if he can special order for me some eye of newt. That's just plain dumb.

Another problem I face when making food -- something I have no one but myself to blame for -- is that I either toss the recipe or file it away in some place I can never find it. My wife is good about keeping track of what cookbook a particular recipe is in or where she wrote it down on a recipe card. I'm just not good at that, so I've decided when I make something that tastes half-way decent I'm going to post it here. I don't care if you make it, but this way it'll be easy for me to find the secret formula when it comes time to whip up another confection.

So to start, here's my doctored up recipe for the joyofbaking.com's peppermint patties. I call them Kevin's Bootleg Peppermint Patties. Let it be said that I fully believe you should never follow a recipe exactly as it's written, so in the event you do make these, don't be afraid to substitute ingredients, use different amounts of something or whatever.

You need:

2 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons soft butter (salted or un- doesn't matter)

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract (the joyofbaking recipe says you should use peppermint oil instead but readily admits that it can't be found in a grocery store -- Again, no thank you pretentious ingredients.)

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons evaporated milk (if you don't have it, just simmer two cups milk over low heat until it reduces to one cup and use three tablespoons of that.)

a 12-ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate (or dark or milk or bitter or whatever)

one tablespoon of shortening

Mix together the powdered sugar, the butter, the vanilla extract, the peppermint extract and the evaporated milk until it forms a moist sticky dough. If it seems too moist to work with, chill it in the fridge for thirty minutes.

Line a cookie sheet (or two) with parchment paper. Again, if you don't have parchment just use aluminum foil, wax paper or the Sports section.

Now pinch off small balls the size of a marble and lay them out on the cookie sheet. I think in my best batch I fit about 60 of those buggers on there. Next flatten them so they're about the same circumference and thickness as two quarters stacked on top of each other. Put these in the freezer to chill for an hour or so.

Melt the chocolate and shortening in a double boiler over low to medium heat. If you're the type that likes to live on the edge, you can melt chocolate in a microwave but I don't advise you put it in there for more than twenty seconds at a time before stirring. Once you burn chocolate the entire batch of it is ruined.

Retrieve the flattened peppermint balls from the freezer and dip them individually into the chocolate making sure they're coated. Use forks to lift them out and put them back on the parchment-lined cookie sheet. Put them back in the freezer for thirty minutes or so to get them to harden and then dip them again in the chocolate. Then put them back in the fridge to set.

These candies freeze well or you can keep them in the fridge. My wife liked them just left out at room temperature.

I joked earlier about eating a whole batch of something during the Tyra show, but if you don't watch it, these could easily be gone by the first commercial break.

Enjoy.

Food allergies for thought

2007-12-04T14:34:00.000-05:00

I am not one to adopt causes and then try and convince others to hop on my band wagon. I especially despise these ax-grinding awareness ribbons that are still littering people's bumpers. For the most part, I prefer to stay unaware. That having been said, I just came across and left a comment in response to a blog post dealing with food allergies, something my family deals with, and thought I'd share. I won't preach. This blogger says it better than I could. Just click if you care. If not, I'll be back to my regularly scheduled banter shortly.

http://www.gnmparents.com/food-allergies-are-serious-business/

Attack of the foot shaver

2007-11-25T13:41:00.001-05:00

I am slowly recovering from an injury I sustained last week. I have been limping since the day after Thanksgiving because I managed to wound myself with a foot shaver. Twice. Dangerous things, those foot shavers.

If you've never seen one they work kinda like a vegetable peeler only for the soles of your feet. Ideally they're to be used to remove dead skin cells from around the heel or big toe or wherever else extra poundage and footwear friction have turned soft skin into alligator scales. The trouble is that because the tool is basically a razor blade on a stick, one wrong move and otherwise happy feet soon become butchered bloody feet.

I use the foot shaver often. My wife thinks I am addicted to it. I'm not though. I could quit at any time. Besides I have to foot shave in order to maintain my personally groomed existence. And this just isn't a good time to stop foot shaving. Not to mention I'm a funnier person when I foot shave. If she really wanted me to stop she'd throw it away and not leave it there in the soap dish. Such the enabler.

When I first bought the device I was briefly admonished by the saleslady at the beauty supply store. Notice it's called the beauty supply store and not the addiction supply store.

"Do you use that on your feet?" the woman asked with a scolding look, her eyes peering out over the rims of her eyeglasses.

"Yes."

"You know that's very bad for your feet, don't you?"

"Is it?"

"All you're doing is creating scar tissue on your feet every time you use it," she said.

"What do you recommend then?" I asked.

With this she smiled and went to try and find the products on the shelf she deemed appropriate for my feet as she explained each one. "You should start out with a foot moisturizer, " she said, "and then use a pumice stone and then finish with a foot buffer."

After she couldn't find the foot buffer she claimed they were out of them and told me that I should come back in a week. Frankly, the moisturizer alone cost more than I wanted to spend, and besides, her prescription didn't look like it would have done the job. Snaky saleslady always trying to upsell to the unwitting customer.

I wanted to ask her who she took me for. I'm not some queenie metrosexual type. I don't do moisturizers or even buffers for that matter. I want something just short of a weapon. Part of me wanted to tell her I'm hard core lady. There are things about me you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand. Instead I just asked her to ring me up so I could get out of the beauty supply store before someone I knew walked in and saw me. The woman reluctantly sold me the shaver and blades.

Once outside I couldn't wait to break out my new gear. How strange would it be, I wondered, if I were to take my shoes off once I got to the car and get started? Nah, that nosy saleslady might spy on me through the store window and come harangue me on the appropriate techniques of proper foot grooming. Like she knows anything.

I could always drive around the back of the strip mall and hide out behind a dumpster and footshave. It wouldn't take me long to get a few good strokes in, I thought. Then again, that same buzzkill might step out back for a smoke break or something and catch me foot shaving. You know she probably smokes. Stupid gateway druggies. Come back in a week, my ass. That was probably just some trick to get me to come to one of her dumb meetings.

So I waited until I got home. That's how come I know I'm not addicted because I could wait until I got home. You see, I'm in control of my foot shaving.

Oddly enough, I never cared about what the bottoms of my feet looked like until I went through chemotherapy. One of the side effects of something they pumped into me was that the soles of my feet became extra soft. I don't know if it was one of the drugs I got or simply because of the amount of saline solution they put into me. I swear, when you undergo chemotherapy, they pump you so full of saline solution that you feel like getting Bausch and Lomb tattooed across your chest. For some people the extra soft feet are a hindrance. In extreme cases it hurts to walk or even put on shoes. Personally, I just basked in knowing my feet were baby smooth. Unfortunately, once the hair on my head grew back, so did the callouses on my feet.

Since that time, I've always yearned to have those same soft feet back. So now I foot shave. Is that so bad? It doesn't affect anyone but me.

I was first turned on to it by some woman in a nail salon that gave me a pedicure. Yeh, I've had a pedicure. So what! For twenty dollars it's the most socially acceptable way for a married man to peer down at the cleavage of a total stranger for ten minutes. Anyway, it was she who first taught me the steps to foot shaving. Turns out there are twelve of them. No correlation though. There just happen to be twelve steps.

Step one is soaking your feet. The second step is making sure you have a fresh clean blade on the foot shaver. That's important otherwise you end up with bloody butchered feet. Step three was . . . well, come to think of it I never did quite catch the last nine steps. The nail tech's English wasn't all that good. Come to think of it neither was her cleavage.

Regardless I now have two wounds on the heel of my right foot. Sadly one is on the right while the other is on the left, so I can't walk on one side of my arch and maintain a semi-normal gait. Instead I have to raise up and walk on the balls of my right foot and put my left foot firmly on the ground. I guess I could walk on the balls of both feet in order to stay parallel but then instead of hobbling I'd just be mincing. Which is worse?

In case you didn't know, the heel of your foot bleeds like a stuck pig. After I cut myself, I had to hop one legged around the house to fetch a couple of Band-Aids, leaving a trail of crimson dots on the tile floor. When I quickly bled through those I replaced them with more Band-Aids. I eventually put on a sock over them but it too soon became blood stained. Yuck.

The blood did stop after I covered it with enough Band-Aids and raised my foot above my chest. Like I said, I'm on the mend now. I'm fine. I know what some of you are thinking though. I can just hear it. You were lucky this time, Kevin. You've got to stop doing this to yourself. Find help. Don't wait to check off all the boxes.

Yeh yeh, blah blah blah . . . You people don't know me . . . You don't know how hard my life is right now . . . All I want is . . . a little something to keep my . . . feet . . . smooth at the end of the day . . . What's so wrong about that? Whatevah, whatevah . . . I do what I want.

Ouch!

Great, now it's my left heel.

Dining out with a baby

2007-11-23T12:19:00.000-05:00

Meryl shows us how to use a lemon wedge as a utensil:

Meryl poses mid-dip for the camera:

Mmm, Mexican cheese dip!!!

Commodore 64, my old friend

2007-11-19T20:47:00.000-05:00

Have you ever thought about how much we use the innerweb, a modern technological tool, for satiating our hunger for nostalgia? You really need not click much further before you stumble onto sites that allow you to find a lost love, look up information on childhood tv shows, or even listen to your favorite song dating back to 8th grade year. Aside from corresponding with family, catching up on news stories, and ridding my inbox of pleas from financially displaced Nigerians, I spend a lot of my online time looking for information on people or things that were around long before there ever was an internet.

My recent walk down memory lane led me back to that old chestnut, the Commodore 64.

My first real introduction to personal computing came at a time when War Games was showing on HBO and Hall and Oates' Private Eyes was playing on Atlanta's Top 40 radio station, Power 99. Ronald Reagan was president, and the Tonight Show starred Johnny Carson. I knew people who greased up Rubik's Cubes with Vaseline in order to more quickly come up with the solution. Sadly, Ronald Reagan , Johnny Carson and Power 99 are now dead. The Rubik's Cube still lives on thanks to some partnered marketing between Target stores and Dustin Hoffman's expected box office flop, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, a.k.a. Willy Ishtar and the Toy Factory. We still got Vaseline too. I was 12 years old at the time. The year was 1984. How Orwellian!

While my family boasted a personal computer at this time, we wouldn't get an actual monitor for another two or three years. In the meantime, our Commodore was hooked up to an old black and white television set. A disk drive was another luxury we did without, instead making do with a tape drive that used standard audio cassettes to store data. Often I'd wait for almost an hour for a program to fully load from one of those tapes. Sometimes it worked; other times my patience was rewarded with that daunting message LOAD ERROR followed by a READY prompt and a blinking cursor. In other words, no program.

Each month we got a copy of Compute's Gazette and it was from the back pages of one issue that I ordered my first modem. 300 baud and that was big time back in the day, kids. With a modem the Commodore 64 served as a portal into the world beyond where you could find bootlegged software, MIDI music and my first introduction to cyber pr0n, much of which consisted of naughty pictures made up of ASCII characters. Mind you, this was back in the day before we had cool terms like pr0n or even cyber for that matter.

BBS's (or bulletin board services for those not in the know) were community run. Some guy who was geekier and more computer savvy than you dedicated one of his terminals to man the calls coming in from people throughout the area. Members exchanged messages, programs and text files. Because it tied up the phone line, the middle of the night was the best time to log on. I dreaded call waiting because an incoming call would bump you off right in the middle of a huge file transfer.

Fast forward to modern times and the innerweb is riddled with sites dedicated to everything dealing with the Commodore, from the synthetic tinny music it produced to the pixellated pictures featured in the most popular games. Some people still have one of the old terminals around and use it to run a model train layout or operate an amateur radio. You can even download an emulator that turns your bells and whistles Y2K compliant machine into a replica of a Commodore 64.

Careful with this last one though. This isn't the first time I've fallen prey to the Commodore 64 nostalgia, and the last time I took a stroll down this stretch of memory lane, I downloaded a similar program onto a work computer that wouldn't terminate. Like something from a Dr. Who episode my IBM classroom computer refused to display anything other than the welcome screen from a Commodore 64. I even tried turning the computer on and off a few times. Same thing. I was stuck in 1984.

I eventually had to confess my misdoings to the technology coordinator who in turn had to get a guy from the county level to come in and fix my computer. The guy who fixed it looked like he was probably too young to have ever seen a Commodore 64. He made the repair in a matter of 20 seconds and I felt stupid. Oh well, I was back to downloading non-work-related software that afternoon.

The Commodore came from a golden age and a quick perusal of eBay shows that for a mere $25 you can get one of the original antiques complete with a disk drive, a modem, a joystick and lots of software to boot. Or for $35 you can get a tshirt that says Commodore 64 whiz kid. I gotta confess that although the Commodore held a fond place in my heart for many years, I wouldn't want to go back to the days of only 64K ram and 38911 basic bytes free whatever that meant. I like my high-speed innerweb and streaming video.

I might get that Commodore 64 whiz kid tshirt though.

Cyber pilgrims seek fashion advice and enlightenment

2007-11-18T13:55:00.000-05:00

Every blogger can tell you that one of the simple pleasures to be had when you have a site meter at the bottom of your blog is to click and see how various readers found you on search engines. Because of the way search engines work, a site that contains a lot of text, such as the one you see before you now, might come up as a result of searching on any number of word combinations. Obviously because of the name of my blog, people who search for COCKTAILS along with any other number of words often find their way here, probably to their dismay as I generally do not provide cocktails recipes on my blog. More often though, people come here because they googled something that I have written about only in passing. Again, they're probably a little disappointed because I do not proclaim to be an expert on any of those subjects either and information on those subjects is usually sparse. For that reason, I decided I'd tip my hat to those cyber pilgrims and offer up some 411 on topics about which, according to my site meter, they're hungering for more information.

HOW TO WEAR SWEATPANTS - Indeed someone googled this one in just the time I was typing the above paragraph. I get a lot of these sweatpant requests because I once wrote about running into an ex while I was wearing them. How does one wear sweatpants, you ask? You don't. Unless you're with a bunch of your girlfriends and you're doing each other's nails and throwing pillows and administering magazine quizzes to each other, sweatpants should not be the garment of choice.

SWEAT PANTS IN SPANISH - Chica, please! Putting on even your best pair of sweatpants is no way to become the rose in Spanish Harlem or anywhere else for that matter. No one lives la vida loca in sweats. If you've been invited to a Quinceanera party at least you will certainly not outshine the young debutante if you're sporting even your best polyester fleece blend. If on the other hand you're wondering how to say sweatpants in Spanish, I should hope the Spaniards or their Spanish speaking cousins south of the border don't have a word for them. Somehow I doubt these are all the rage in Barcelona, and I'm also guessing there were no sweatpants at the Alamo.

HOW TO WEAR SWEATPANTS - I know what you're thinking, gentle reader. You suspect these first three are also from the same person. Nope. While they all happened within the same ten-minute interval, one searcher was from Illinois, one from Washington, and one from Oregon. Sadly, there are just that many people out there who want permission to model the elastic waistband outside the privacy of their own home. Just not good.

HAVE A BLESSED DAY WHAT DOES THAT MEAN - I wondered the same thing when I posed the question here. That entry received a new response as recently as yesterday evening when someone chimed in with their own answer. Sadly they used that opportunity not so much as a way of offering up additional information but instead to spew some xenophobic pablum which consisted largely of ethnic slurring and touting their own false and greatly misguided sense of superiority. I found it good for a chuckle though, so don't be afraid to indulge your funny bone by reading the response of someone who likely attends worship service with David Duke and Dog the Bounty Hunter.

CHARTER SUCKS - Admittedly I have on a few occasions written about a company that has pissed me off hoping that other people looking for information on that company will google them, hear my tales of woe and take them into advisement before doing business with the company. Charter Communications is one of these companies. While I've written extensibly about it here, words cannot convey the frustration I repeatedly felt when dealing with Charter. Firing them and hiring AT&T was one of the best consumer decisions I ever made. Whenever I click on my site meter and see that someone found me by searching Charter sucks I do a little jig.

BURGER KING CZECH - To be perfectly honest, I don't know if His Royal Highness is Czechoslovakian or not. The thought never really occurred to me until now. I guess he could be. I was in Prague, they eat hamburgers there too. I regret I can't even pretend to speak with any authority on this matter. If you're wondering whether there are Burger Kings in the Czech Republic, yes, there are. As to what they call a Royale with Cheese, I don't know. I never ate at a Burger King there. Sadly, my wife did snap some pictures of me eating Kentucky Fried Chicken on the Prague subway. At least I didn't have sweatpants on.

WHAT TO WEAR WITH SWEATPANTS - Do you people not get it? A bag over your head. Even then the bag would be the better wardrobe choice.

TRICHOTILLOMANIA - I've actually mentioned this odd a few times on here. It's the desire to pull out one's own hair. I'm always impressed when the people spell it correctly. Good job! In the meantime, call 1-800-DON'T PULL.

POWERFUL COCKTAILS - Like I said, I don't know enough cocktail recipes, powerful or otherwise, to list them on this site. Though when I was an exchange student in France, a fellow Yank I had a crush on suggested we buy a bottle of champagne and head out to a park to imbibe. When that didn't give me the courage I needed, she and I went back to buy a bottle of rum and some Cokes and polish those off. This combination did in fact make me overly courageous, but it also rendered me overly nauseous. Even if you've got your hand up someone's shirt, coming to in a puddle of your own vomit with a semi-circle of gawking Frenchmen looking at you is not the ideal way to broaden your horizons. It was powerful though.

KEVIN - With as broad a search as this yielded and as common a name as Kevin is (34th most common first name in the U.S. according to howmanyofme.com) I was surprised to see my sight come up on page 5 of this AOL search. To whoever did the searching, you're going to have to come up with a little more information for the search engine to go on if you really want to find your one true Kevin. Is it Kevin Bacon, Kevin Costner, Kevin Kubusheskie, or Saint Kevin of Glendalough? So many Kevins.

"RUE MCLANAHAN" DADS - Again, not an expert on this golden girl but I suspect she only had one father. As to the television preview she starred in of the show Dads that never made it on the airwaves, just be glad you haven't seen it. I got a copy in the mail from a research company that wanted me to watch it and answer some questions about the commercials I saw. That show was just plain bad.

RESTAURANTS SERVING THANKSGIVING DINNER IN NORFOLK, VA - Yes, I'm pretty sure they are.

HAD SEX WITH SOMEONE THAT HAD KELOIDS - What do you want? A medal? I once had sex with someone who had dandruff. You don't see me telling everyone on the innerwebs.

FREE MY SOUL GONNA GET LOST IN YOUR ROCK AND ROLL - And drift away, my friend. Drift away.

Clearly though the one that takes the cake is this one:

MY WIFE TEASES MY BECAUSE SHE HAS MUCH MORE PUBIC HAIR THAN I DO.

I can't make this stuff up people.

Further amended as of 11/25/07:
WHO SINGS THE SONG WHERE HE IS DANCING AROUND THE PURPLE ELEPHANT
PHILADELPHIA DERMATOLOGISTS WHO TREAT GENITAL WARTS
ARE BABY WALKERS ILLEGAL IN THE USA
COLLEGE WEAR SWEATPANTS
VENERAL[sic] WARTS
DOES AMOXICILLIN CHANGE YOUR POOP
FLICKR PHOTOS TAGGED WITH ASS GIRLS KLM
WEARING SWEATPANTS THANKSGIVING
PRETEND AND PLAY DOCTOR EXAM ROOM
SALESGIRL PICKED OUT MY PANTIES
COLLEGE CHEERLEADERS PICS SHOWING PUBIC HAIR DURING ROUTINES

Mousetrap: a mystery blog entry in one act

2007-11-14T20:56:00.000-05:00

Today I spent a large portion of my day chasing down a mouse, only this wasn't one of those pesky rodents that the cat drags in and drops at your feet. I was looking for the mouse to the computer. We have a wireless optical mouse for the desktop and the table it sits on is just the right height for my daughter to reach up and grab things off of. I know this sounds cute, and I guess it is if you're not the owner of the mouse, but crawling around the house on your hands and knees looking for a pointing device is no way to spend an afternoon.

After rescuing a feisty non-napping Meryl from her crib I went to go check my email. Alas, the mouse was nowhere in sight. I looked under the desk, around it, in the closet next to it and still no mouse. Meryl, who was watching me he whole time, finally said one of the new words in her growing vocabulary.

Mouse.

OK, so she knew what I was looking for, which I assumed to mean she also knew where I could find it. So I asked her, "Meryl, where's the mouse?"

Mouse.

"Yes, Sweetie, the mouse. For Dad's computer? Where is it?"

Mouse? This time she says it with an upward inflection as though she's asking me where it is.

I then proceded to wander throughout the house trying to put myself in the mind of a toddler so as to figure out where she might have deposited it. Because I, myself, am absent minded I soon start to wonder if in fact it was I who removed it from its regular spot. Would I have accidentally picked it up when I was looking for something else maybe? I quickly decided that even as scatter brained as I sometimes am, I'm not the type to have just carried a computer mouse around while doing my household bidness. A real mouse maybe but not a computer mouse.

I resorted to crawling around the floors of various rooms looking under beds and behind couches. All this time Meryl followed close behind taunting me by just saying over and over mouse mouse mouse mouse. I couldn't tell if she was implying that she too was looking for the mouse or if she remembered having the mouse or was she thinking of Goodnight Moon's young mouse in the little toyhouse [sic]? Then another time she quit saying mouse and instead said Chris, apparently claiming the mouse was taken by our termite guy whose name she learned earlier that day when she supervised him as he crawled behind our couch looking for bugs.

Cute as she was, she wasn't being much help. And to top things off this was moments before my wife was due to come home. This time is usually set aside for madly running around the house cleaning slash straightening slash kicking things under the beds and sweeping things under the rugs.

Then I had this fleeting sense of dread. You know that scene in Poltergeist where the parents are looking for little Carol Anne after her disappearance and the mom gets this contorted look on her face just before saying in this eerily quiet panick-stricken voice the swimming pool . . . oh my God . . . she's in the swimming pool ? Then Craig T. Nelson has to dive into that preconstruction mud pit that was to eventually become their pool in order to find his kid. While I wasn't concerned Meryl had fallen into a swimming pool or worse yet that I was going to have to swim around in mud with the skeletal remains of bewildered souls because someone only moved the headstones, I probably did have that same contorted look on my face.

THE POTTY!!! OH MY GOD, SHE THREW IT IN THE POTTY!!!

I dashed to the master bathroom where Meryl generally sits on the potty and I lifted the lid. Nothing but water and a bowl that I probably was supposed to have scrubbed clean before Elaine got home. I looked around the toilet thinking maybe Meryl just dunked the mouse in the potty a few times before throwing it down on the floor the way she likes to do with her rubber ducky, her socks or my toothbrush. Still no mouse.

I checked the other two bathrooms in the house. More toilets to clean but still no mouse. I looked in the shower and the bathtub. I opened bathroom cabinets, pulled open drawers, looked under folded washcloths. Nothing. Finally I gave up because time was running short and there was a bed to be made, dinner to plan for and stuff to sweep under the rug.

Once I checked the cursory house straightening off my list I went back into the room with the computer to check yet again to see if I could find the mouse. Apparently as I was tidying Meryl had taken it upon herself to bang on the keyboard just enough to bring up several blank search windows. Just seeing them made me all the more frustrated. I had no mouse to close them out. A motionless cursor poised in the upper right corner of the screen just sat their adding insult to injury. The screensaver came on but I still knew those unwanted windows were lurking behind it. I briefly tried remembering the ALT-key combinations that would work the various menus on the screen before giving up and just turning the damn thing off.

Elaine arrived home happy to see a smiling baby and the beginnings of Shrimp Scampi laid out on the kitchen counter. I explained to her that Meryl had run off with the mouse and I had looked everywhere for it to no avail. "It'll turn up," she said.

It did.

Elaine found it in Meryl's toy basket that we keep in the living room. I guess I should be happy she's the kind of kid who puts things up when she's through playing with them. She gets that from her mom. As much time as I spend playing on the computer it would make sense that my daughter saw it fit to put the mouse in the toybox. After all, that basket serves as one of my old standbys for an easy place to quickly get rid of something. Oh well.

Shrimp scampi was good. Meryl spent the evening playing and laughing in spite of not having napped. My wife and I enjoyed a good bottle of Australian Outback backseat wine and I can point and click again.

This house. Is clean.

Georgia governor praying for rain?

2007-11-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

I had vowed to myself that I would try and make my blog more uplifting from now on and not be such a Negative Nelson. I will revisit that ideal at some time in the near future, but I just can't go without sharing my views on this new hullabaloo going on at the Georgia Capitol building. Governor Sonny Perdue and some other muckety mucks along with a number of bible thumpers who have cashed in their common sense in exchange for piety are gathering together in order to pray for rain. Sadly, I am not making this up.

Many protesters have shown up claiming this is a violation of the First Amendment. I don't know that I buy that either. The governor's not establishing a religion. Whose to say he's not on his lunch break? If he wants to pray, that's no sweat off my back. I just think praying for rain is just plain silly.

If you believe there's a higher power that's all knowing and all powerful, doesn't said higher power already know you wish it would rain without you making a show of it? Furthermore, if the higher power (let's just call it H.P. from now on so as not to offend anyone) changes its mind and causes it to rain simply because a few political clowns down here on earth want it to, is H.P. really all powerful? Sure, H.P. could make it rain and that's a pretty neat and powerful trick, but if his opinion was swayed by Earthling petitioners, that's not evidence of omnipotence. That's evidence to the fact that others have power over H.P. You follow me?

I also am amused at the request in this case. Rain. Let's face it. It's gonna rain here in Georgia someday. We're not sure when. No one knows that. Not even WSB Channel 2 meteorologist David Chandley. But it's gonna rain. Now once it happens Governor Perdue and all his friends can take credit. Can't you just hear them all now?

It rained!
Huzzah!
Thanks to our prayer.
Glory be to Sonny and H.P. and WSB Channel 2 meteorologist David Chandley.

Praying for rain is like praying for nightfall.

Because the conservatives in this country have bedded down with the mindless theocrats, and both Democrats and Republicans often prefer shooting down the other's views as opposed to standing up for their own, I can't help but wonder if this will now become a party issue. Will Democrats encourage us to pray for continued drought simply to oppose their neighbors to the right? Or better yet, will those rebel flag-waving hayseeds crawl out of their doublewides to further share their dismay for a governor who said he'd let them vote on getting the Dukes of Hazzard emblem put back on the state flag and then reneged? They can carry signs that say SONNY LIED! SHOUT FOR DROUGHT!

Will it end up like the opening of a high school football game where two teams are each praying for their own win? Parenthetically, how does H.P. rectify that one? Is it whichever team has the most skilled players? Best looking cheerleaders? What?

This whole pray-for-rain business is just such a bunch of rubbish. Here's an idea: Instead of meeting up at the Capitol to pray for rain, head further up Peachtree St. to the Federal Reserve Bank and just lollygag around the flagpole there a while. When security comes out and asks you what you're doing, tell them you're praying for $20.
In H.P. we trust.

Reading is fundamental

2007-11-12T21:36:00.000-05:00

My 18-month-old daughter loves to be read to. This is reason to rejoice of course because it means that instead of turning on the television to entertain her, she brings me books to read , climbing up into my lap while wearing a big smile across her face. Sometimes she likes to be read the same books over and over several times in a row.

If you've not had the occasion to read children's books recently, specifically those geared toward toddlers, I can assure you that there are some old favorites from way back when that still remain. Margaret Wise-Brown must have a cult following with Goodnight Moon. I don't even know if she's still alive but I can assure you the three bears sitting in chairs are. So is the young mouse. Incidentally, where does the author get off making toy house one word as in "a young mouse and a little toyhouse [sic]"? I'm not passing judgment; I just think she should quote a source.

Meryl also is a fan of Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi. Really though, if you're a toddler, what's there not to like about a book that features illustrations of people pooping? Whenever I turn the page to the picture of the man pooping on the potty as he smokes a pipe and reads a newspaper, Meryl points to the picture and says Dada Dada. For the record I don't smoke a pipe.

I love the line that says, "Some poop and pay no attention." According to the picture hippopotamuses are in this category. Who knew?

There are of course other books in my kid's collection that make me cringe when she hands them to me. This may come as a surprise to many, but baby books aren't always what I would classify as page turners. This is especially true for the lift-the-flap books which without fail seem to evolve into rip-the-flap books. The books must be well written for the intended audience though because Meryl continues to bring them to me. I have to confess I'm really getting tired of Karen Katz's Where is Baby's Belly Button?

First of all, does this really qualify as a brainteaser? My kid's not two years old and she knows where her belly button is. She also likes to lift my shirt and show me where mine is. The girl knows her belly buttons. And even if she didn't, reading this book more than once seems like rereading a mystery novel over and over. I don't mean to spoil it for anyone who hasn't yet read the book but it's UNDER HER SHIRT! You find out on the last page if in fact your last page of the book still has a shirt. For us, the shirt is one of the ripped flaps, having been long retired to the trash can.

Where is Baby's Mommy? is by the same author and offers an equally intriguing storyline. When I first saw this book I thought it looked like something you might pick up off the table in the waiting room at the Department of Family and Children's Services. Turns out the baby's mommy hasn't abandoned the baby or anything; she's just playing hide-and-seek. The reader follows baby through several rooms of the house looking for Mommy. Where's Mommy? Behind the plant? No, the ball is behind the plant. Is Mommy in the closet? No, the wagon is in the closet. Yadda yadda yadda. The book has similar looking characters to those you find in Where is Baby's Belly Button? They all have gigantic baby foreheads and look a little like poorly drawn Japanime stills. Yawn.

That being said, Meryl loves it.

Personally I'm still waiting for the Montelesque heart-warming sequel Who is Baby's Daddy?

Now that's one to grown on.

Rome and Tuscany: an outsider's perspective

2007-11-02T20:11:00.000-04:00

Still caught up in the last throws of jetlag, wife and I have returned from a ten-day sojourn to the birthplace of Western civilization. When I say Western I don't mean like Bonanza. I mean like people whose ways aren't backward and strange.

Anyway we went to Italy, and as you can possibly imagine, my stories are many. Because I could go on for days about how wonderful the trip was, I'll try and limit myself to only a brief epistle and hit the highlights.

Our journey started with Alitalia. I wanted to like this airline. Really I did, but the cabins were in various stages of disrepair depending on what seat you were in, and the flight attendants were some surly bitches. The women flight attendants weren't any better. At one point I walked back to their secret hiding area behind the curtain to return my meal tray and utensils. One stewardess just looked at me abruptly and said NO before returning her attention to her own piss-poor airline food. Oh well, at least they got us to our destination and then stepped in to help when those lazy Air France people went on strike.

A few days in Rome proved to be a remarkable experience. I'm not normally one for monuments and museums, but this city has relics older than any I'd ever seen. It wasn't out of the ordinary to see modern buildings constructed around two thousand-year-old pillars that still remain. As I stood in the Colosseum gazing out into the arena I thought to myself you're in a building that dates back 30 years after the death of Christ.

Speaking of Rabbi Jesus, I did add yet another country to my list of places that have welcomed me with open arms, namely Vatican City. I opted against going into St. Peter's Basilica as the line was almost as long as the one at the airline ticket counter in the Rome airport thanks to those anti-work numbnuts at Air France (my wife had to wait in line eleven hours).

I did make it into the Vatican museum though. Individual artworks in this place were incredible and even the gardens it overlooks were beautiful, but a travelling friend of mine put it well when he said, "It's no wonder they had a Protestant Reformation." In just fifteen minutes the Vatican museum starts to get a little overwhelming. So much stuff. Too many notes.

In Florence I did little other than pick up a rental car and buy a few clothing items (our suitcase would not arrive for another three days). I did end up going to the large market in the center of town where I had a yummy panini and Coke Zero, or as they say in Italian Coke Zero but that was on the return trip. Florence was an easy train ride up from Rome and made for a great jumping off point for the trip through Tuscany.

Not enough wonderful things could be said about Montestigliano, the site of the restored farm house we stayed in for the bulk of our stay. Same goes for Susan Pennington who, in addition to running the place, went to great lengths to help us retrieve our suitcase from Alitalia. Because she was a native English speaker (the Queen's though; not W's) she was able to share her passion for the area with us and help us drum up some wonderful ways to spend our holiday. If you've stumbled across my innerweb site by googling Montestigliano, please oh please feel free to email me at cocktailswithkevin@hotmail.com and I'll tell you all the wonderful things about it. Better yet, just go ahead and book the place. There are eleven guest homes in all and of the people we met during our stay, everyone loved where he was staying.

In the days that followed I visited (not necessarily in this order) Chianti, Assisi, Pisa, Perugia, Sovana, Orbitello, Ercolo, Porto San Stefano, Pitigliano and You Mixed Up Sicialiano. Just kidding. I never went to Sicily. Maybe next trip.

The Chocolate Festival in Perugia was like nothing I had ever seen. For those who have never ventured beyond Hershey and Nestle, Perugia chocolate is akin to Lindt, Cadbury or Ghirardelli in that it tastes yummy and costs a pretty penny. Each year the town of Perugia hosts a chocolate festival where you can buy anything and everything so long as it contains chocolate. I got a chocolate panini complete with cocoa-laden salami and bread.

Words cannot describe the mayhem that was this festival. The entire downtown was closed off to traffic so that pedestrians could roam freely and eat their weight in chocolate. It was just surreal.

The Strada Panoramica around the coast of Porto San Stefano lead us to a frightful knuckle whitening journey bordering both the sea and our own deaths. Views were spectacular but so were our lives flashing before our eyes. If we weren't staring down a quarter mile into a watery abyss we were trying to maneuever a Mercedez A class across dangerously rough terrain without getting stuck in no-man's land without any way to call for help other than honking at passing ships.

Castelina in Chianti is a quaint little town to stop in and have a glass of its namesake, but interestingly enough the SR222, or Chianti Highway as it's affectionately known, on the way from Siena to Florence is lined with hookers. It's weird because the beautifully scenic drive is essentially desolate of people with the exception of a lone woman in tight fitting clothes and an ill fitting wig at every other pull-off. We passed.

In Assisi I saw the Cathedral of St. Francis. Now I wasn't raised Catholic so my knowledge of St. Francis before this trip was limited to what I had learned about him at Pike Nursery. He's made of indoor outdoor resin and likes birds. I do know the story of how he had preached to birds and animals, but if you think about it televangelists across the country preach to flocks of mindless sheep everyday so what's the big deal.

The cathedral, though Gothic in style, had a more modern appearance than many in the country perhaps because it underwent major restoration after an earthquake in 1997. The patron saint of animals, birds and the environment is buried in a tomb that is accessible via a double staircase going down from the nave. We saw a monk on his knees praying while he extended one hand through the grating onto the tomb. Upstairs a priest with a North American accent was giving mass in English. Again we passed.

All in all, Italy was a country I had not been particularly crazy about visiting and yet I'm so glad I took the opportunity to go. I had assumed it would be like many other Western European countries in that it has the major items on the checklist: cathedrals, castles, a famous bridge slash monument and pricey food and accomodations. Indeed Italy does have all those things, but there's something magical about the country in a way there isn't about many others. From the time of the Etruscans to the Romans to the early Church there's just a vibrancy about the place. It's like its own Mesopotamia for what we like to think of as the modern world.

Belgium is a country I've been to and won't necessarily feel the need to revisit. Same goes for Chile. They're fun places and all; I've just put a check mark by them and that's that. Italy is a country I hope to go back to. This time Elaine and I will take our kid. Hopefully she won't want to climb that bell tower in Siena. Rarely have I ever felt so sick.

Chocolate panini on its second time around is not a pretty sight.

Language lessons for travelling abroad

2007-11-02T19:57:00.000-04:00

In less than a week now my wife and I take off to Italy. As with any international trip I try and learn a few key phrases before I go so that I don't come across as a dumbass to everyone under the Tuscan sun. With a little practice anybody can learn to fake a few phrases well enough to get what he wants provided expectations are kept to a minimum. Czech and Hungarian were each a real doozie , but Italian seemsto me to be less problematic.

When I was teaching French I once had a band director come up to me and ask what tape series he could use to become fluent in Spanish. I held back my guffaw but I did let him know that language learning wasn't something that generally takes place through audiocassettes. To a good listener the tapes can provide a sampling of what the individual phonemes of the language sound like, but that's about it. To someone who already has a vague idea what the language sounds like, I think phrase books are more useful, but even they are quite limited.

The Berlitz phrasebook I picked up for instance has translations for Where is the passport control?; I'm here alone; and artificial sweetener. Let's just take these three for example:

No one really needs to know how to ask where passport control is. If you don't find passport control shortly after going through the customs line, passport control will most likely find you. That's if the country you're going to even cares that you've entered. On more than one occasion I've entered Europe without going through passport control. One time passport control consisted of four kepi-wearing Frogs who had their feet propped up on a table. Three of them apparently just studied the travel fashion trends of American tourists while the fourth guy just kept waving us all through the corridor with his hand. If no one asks to stamp your passport, just enjoy living off the grid.

The phrase about being here alone is found in the Romance section of the book. I'm sure there are people who venture overseas and start a budding romance, but something tells me their language skills would be above that of phrasebook level. If not, I'd fear the romance I was starting was going to end with me waking up alone and penniless in some third-rate motel or worse yet a back alley. And then there'd be that lasting itch. Yuck.

Artificial sweetener? Don' get me wrong. I use artificial sweetener too. Hell, I've already had cancer. What's the worst thats going to happen? But traveling abroad is a time to throw caution to the wind and leave some petty comfort slash obsessions at home. I'm sorry, but for me going to Italy and asking for artificial sweetener is like going to Italy and saying, "Hey, do y'all have any grits?" Until you get back home, let that shit go.

Here's what you need to know before going to a country where they speak another kind of talk. You won't likely be invited to join in on any conversations dealing with international politics or nuclear physics. You probably won't have too many conversations with locals period other than the short routine service-oriented discussions. So keep it simple.

Figure out how to say these things:

Hello (there's usually only about fourteen different ways to say this depending on time of day)
Thank you, Sir
Thank you, Ma'am
Please

Those biggies will get you much further than you think because most Americans won't even bother to learn those. You will stand out among your tennis shoe and sweatpant wearing comrades because you made an effort to be polite. Politesse always goes a long way in Europe because they frankly don't always expect it of Americans,. Of course the definition of polite varies from culture to culture but that's a whole 'nother issue.

Once you've got those phrases down you can pick up a phrasebook or look on the innerwebs to find out how to say the things you'll most likely want or need. Here are a few suggestions:

room, bed, and shower (that takes care of the hotel);
water, wine list, menu, Coke, Diet Coke (everything else will be listed on the menu once you get it)
Check please? (if you don't get this one down, just practice that fake scribbling on your hand -- as stupid as it looks this is an internationally recognized symbol.)

Other than a few other nouns that might come in handy, those are all you really need. You can always ask a question by saying the thing it is you want and tacking on please at the end. I'll be visiting the Vatican so I'll probably also try and learn The street will flow with the blood of the nonbelievers. Just kidding.

Passenger watch list, here I come.

mbick said...: First off, hello from a reader/lurker who has enjoyed your blog the past few weeks.

I agree with you that learning the most basic phrases of a foreign language will put you great lengths ahead of most Americans abroad.

I have to say, though, that when I was visiting in Rome and browsing a shop of sundries, the shopkeeper and I conducted our entire transaction of my purchase of a lighter with several nods and smiles. I think I probably was able to choke out Italian "Good morning" and "thank you." I treasure that lighter now more for the way we transacted our business that the lighter itself for function or beauty.; 5:44 PM
karen said...: Haven't you been on the watch list for, like, years now?; 8:28 PM
Anonymous said...: give the pope a shout out for those you are leaving in the BC to watch your baby!!; 11:33 AM

Nanaonwales screwed me over

2007-10-12T22:45:00.000-04:00

Toddler speak: repeatedly saying the same thing twice again over and over

2007-10-01T14:13:00.000-04:00

Parenting a toddler is no easy chore, and now that words have started to come out of little Meryl's mouth, I find myself somehow devolving into a monosyllabic caveman whose vocabulary bank has been robbed. Yesterday I dropped my wife off at the airport and the conversation in the car on the ride home with Meryl went something like this:

Mama?

Mama's going out of town?

Mama?

Mom's getting on her plane, Sweetie.

Dada?

Dad's driving.

Mama?

Mama's going to Washington D.C.

Shoes?

Yep, you've got your shoes on.

Mama?

Going out of town.

Dada?

Driving.

Pizza?

No pizza today.

Mama?

Plane.

Dada?

Dad's in the car.

Car?

Car.

Mama?

Plane.

We went on like this for roughly twenty miles. We made a brief detour into Little Five Points to eat lunch and walk around, partially so Meryl could stretch her legs after being in a car seat for so long but mainly because I needed to break the monotony before being driven insane.

We parked in a meter that thankfully still had time left from the previous parker who was obviously either more paranoid of being towed than I usually am or at least less cheap. I almost never put money in parking meters. For one thing, I don't carry change and secondly I'm a scofflaw.

I learned the trick years ago from my driving instructor who came from the Taggart Driving School. He said that in the event I got a parking ticket I shouldn't pay it because it would only be $1o and if the city of Atlanta had to ever track me down to get their money it would only increase to $25 and they weren't likely to go that route. The only parking ticket I ever got was in Belgium so I don't know if the instructor's theory was correct or not. Incidentally I didn't pay the ticket I got in Belgium either.

As I open the back car door, Meryl says to me, "Car?" And thus the conversation continued:
Yes, Dad's getting you out of the car.

Shoes? Yep, you've still got both shoes on.

Mama?

Mom's out of town now. We're going to eat lunch.

[Meryl makes a smacking sound to show me she understands lunch] Pizza?

No, we had pizza yesterday.

Pizza. No.

That's right. No pizza.

Mama?

No, mom is not here. It's just you and Dad.

Little Five Points, one of Atlanta's more esoteric and nouveau hippy neighborhoods, was just opening up about the time we pulled in. Meryl and I tooled around and found ourselves hanging out among some heavily inked longhairs, one of whom had apparently just been to Starbucks. The coffee drinker just looked so hypocritically dichotomous to me. Who comes to a neighborhood as avant garde as Little Five Points so they can order something so suburbanly vanilla as Starbucks? Oh well. Who am I to judge?

Cup?

Yes, he's got a cup.

Hot?

[At this point the local chimed in.] Yeh, it's hot.

Shoes?

Yep, he's got shoes on.

[Again the guy humors Meryl with a response.] Yeh, they're flip-flops.

Someone with a key showed up and unlocked the door to a tattoo parlor slash tchotchke boutique and all the longhairs went in. Even with all the tattoos they had between them, it hadn't occurred to me that they were artists themselves. Come to think of it, it hadn't occurred to me any of them even had jobs. I'm judgmental that way. Sue me.

Meryl and I walked around some more, ate lunch at a corner tavern where she subjected fellow diners to volume ten screams and happy squeals before moving to a secluded corner table in a back room. There she littered the floor with hummus, roasted asparagas, and goat cheese pita wrap.

Yes, I'm one of those parents who isn't afraid to take his kid into a place that doesn't generally cater to children, but I try and always leave extra generous gratuity to make up for the extra work a good server is willing to do. Besides, if the restaurant has highchairs (and this one did), I take it to mean a baby's welcome.

On the drive from Little Five Points home Meryl's mood started to dwindle. Her talking turned into whining and eventually that tearless cry that denotes extreme discontent. As loud as it was, it was somewhat of a relief not to have to carry on a conversation about Mom being out of town, me driving and Meryl having both shoes on.

Just when I was about to carry her into her room and lay her in her crib she said, "Pot." We are toilet training and this means she has to go to the potty.

You wanna go sit on the potty?

Pot?

OK, Dad'll put you on the potty.

Mama?

Mom's at work. Out of town. In Washington. Dad can put you on the potty.

Pot?

Yep, here we go.

She successfully uses the potty and then looks at me with her arms up in the air.

Up?

You want up?

Up.

OK, Dad'll get you up.

Another successful bathroom visit. As we flush she looks into the swirling water and waves.

Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Project961.com

2007-09-24T14:30:00.000-04:00

I suppose since I watch a minimal amount of television and listen mainly to AM radio that it should be acceptable for an FM station to try and target their advertising to me via a mailed postcard, but come on -- at least make it appealing to the reader. A local station is apparently running a promotion where they're giving away fully restored muscle cars to their listeners. Huzzah!

On the front of the postcard are three cars deemed "muscle cars" by the ad folks at Atlanta's WKLS 96.1. Recognizable to me is the 60-something-model Mustang, mainly because in college I dated a girl who drove one. She always complained about having to change the spark plugs. Lucky for me she wasn't one of those chicks who expected her beau to be car-savvy. This may surprise some of you who know me, but my knowledge about automobiles extends only to cranking them and filling them up with gas. I don't know a sparkplug from a mucus plug.

What gets me is the youngspeak language used on the card. Get this:

Nothing says "guy card" like owning a fully restored American Muscle Car!

What does it mean to be a "guy card" holder? Isn't guy too broad of a term to merit cardship? It just sounds too much like saying "human card" or "omnivore card" to me. Or am I wrong to assume by guy they mean male?

Here's another one:

Plus, we're hookin a brotha up for the Fall race weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Call it narrow minded on my part, but I think the term brotha should be reserved for men who have at least some degree of sub-Saharan African ancestry. You know what else? I've never been to the Atlanta Motor Speedway, but something tells me the aforementioned brothas aren't in high number at a venue known primarily for offering beer-swilling White guys a place to watch souped up racecars crash into each other. The postcard may as well say Plus, we're hookin a brotha up with full hockey gear and two backstage passes to Barry Manilow.

Those folks at WKLS 96.1 sure know how to help a brotha out, don't they?

Oh well. Guess I have to cash in my guy card.

County Seat presents The Philadelphia Story at the Aurora Theater

2007-09-17T23:42:00.001-04:00

My feet are of clay. Do you know it?

Or shall I say Do you know what having feet of clay means? I didn't, so I axed the Google.

Having feet of clay means to have some weakness that your admirers weren't aware of before but have only recently come to discover. One innerweb reference sites James Joyce, that dead Irishman, as the source but I think somehow the expression dates back to the Bible. I don't know for sure that it came from the Bible. I'm just guessing. Hell, I went to public school.

I don't get to say the line; the lead actress does. Lead actresses get all the best lines but the question is: Who gets the girl in the end? I know already.

So there!

Another favorite line of mine is You! All of you! And your damned sophisticated ideas! I know this sounds a bit antiquated, but the play takes place in the post-depression thirties. Why don't people talk like this anymore? Hell, I don't know. I went to public school.

Come to think of it, I'm 35 and my 20s were a nightmare. Am I in my post-depression thirties?

Anyway, back at the ranch . . .

Community theater is like a drug for me. I know when I sign up to be in a show that I really shouldn't take the time and energy away from my family, but somehow the altered state of consciousness known as the stage beckons to me in an impelling voice that somehow can't be ignored. So I take that first hit, enjoy that momentary euphoria felt while on stage, and then I crash and burn when it's time to take down the set at the end of a run.

I can't very well knock community theater though. I met my wife that way. And as far as lead actresses go, she's the tops. The absolute tops, my dear.

More theatrical banter from me -- sorry.

For those unfamiliar with community theater, let me briefly summarize. A bunch of people come together to prance around on stage pretending to be people they're not. They do this for no reward other than the intrinsic value of escaping reality even if only for a few stolen hours of a few Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Almost always, there's some egotistic jamoke of mediocre talent who shows up and gets a part.

In our production, that someone is me. I will continue to belt out my lines and hog the spotlight for as long as they'll have me. My view on acting is summed up thusly:

blah blah blah MY LINE blah blah blah MY LINE blah blah blah MY LINE

That's what real life's really about, isn't it? What is it Shakespeare said?

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
who can't remember their lines.

Okay, now I'm just projecting, but you get the idea.

In case you were wondering, our little gem of a show runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8:00 PM from Sept 20^th through the 29^th and at 2:30 PM on Sundays Sept 23^rd and 30^th. Tickets can be purchased by clicking hither. Yes, you'll have to register if you don't already have an online presence with the Aurora Theater in Lawrenceville, GA but that's just one of those cyber hoops we have to occasionally jump through. Ya dig? Alternatively you can give them a ring at 770-476-7926 .

Furthermore, I realize that the Aurora (like many other theatrical groups out there) likes to refer to themselves as a "theatre" with an R-E as opposed to an E-R, but guess what?

I don't roll that way.

So booyah!

My feet are of clay. Do you know it?

Zoo Atlanta panda turns one; Human baby not amused.

2007-09-06T14:37:00.000-04:00

Meryl and I went to her first marsupial birthday party today. Oh, sure, she's been to a human birthday party, but today was the day that Atlanta-born panda, Mei Lan, celebrated her first trip around the sun at our zoo. There was much ado.

The guest list included such dignitaries as Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, Georgia's lieutenant governor, and various muckety mucks from Delta Airlines, the city of Chengdu in China and Zoo Atlanta.

To make a long story short, Meryl, who recently turned sixteen months old herself, started to break down shortly after we got to the event. To her defense, I must say the party's opening ceremonies were anything but kid friendly. I basically spent thirty minutes trying to hold a struggling baby while listening to some suits from far and wide drone on about Chinese-American relations, direct flights from Atlanta to China and whatnot.

To paraphrase it went something like this:

Mei Lan's parents came to us from China applause applause applause It is important that Atlanta maintain good relations with the Chinese applause applause applause The panda is a symbol of peace applause applause applause.

When the vice mayor of Chengdu finished speaking in his native Mandarin I thought it only polite to applaud for him as well. I was one of the few. Then his interpreter went up to the mic and translated into English what he had said. I forget her exact words but it was something about the research center and artificial insemination. I felt kinda dumb having applauded but hey, who doesn't like panda husbandry?

The line of vacant strollers outside the tent had led me to believe that taking one inside would be frowned upon. Again, I was in the minority with my assumption. For every stroller left outside there were three or four inside. Only, the strollers inside were occupied by sippy-cup wielding panda seekers, some of whom had already started to cry.

When I tired of trying to hold a baby that obviously didn't want to be held, I made a brief retreat outside in order to reclaim our stroller. Meryl refused to be strapped in, so I held one handle while she pushed the thing around in circles. This game entertained her for a few short minutes until she ran into an important looking Chinese guy in a designer suit and man purse. He quickly braced her so as not to let her fall backwards and then smiled at me. Meryl did not feel the love however and shrieked at him, I imagine, simply for being in her way. I said thank you in Chinese, one of the few expressions I know and whisked her and the stroller away.

Some kids and parents had made their way to a second tent where birthday cake was to be served. Meryl and I headed there but found the crowd to be too close-knit and not conducive to a now overly-tired baby with a bad case of stroller rage. So instead I let her push the stroller around the zoo.

I tried to point out a small-clawed otter but she paid it no mind. A kimodo dragon also proved to be no competition for pushing a stroller along the pavement. Not even an elephant phased her.

Then she fell. This is when all baby hell broke loose.

Meryl starts to get clumsy when she gets tired. When she falls this only aggravates the crankiness. After righting her and trying again to put her in the stroller I ended up just standing under the awning of the tiger exhibit and watched as she screamed. It wasn't her hurt scream either. It was just the scream she uses when she tries to get the attention of anyone around. We are still trying to decipher her toddler babble but I think in her blood curdling voice she was shouting something like everyone please look at my inept father!

Oh, the joys of parenthood.

I finally hog tied my kid into the stroller and quickly tried to find the exit. Never in my life have I wanted to leave a zoo faster than I did today. To add to my frustration, I could not find the way out for anything, so I just pushed a screaming baby through the serpentine maze we call the zoo while captive animal after captive animal retreated to their respective hidey holes to get away from the piercing noise. It was bad. I briefly pictured my daughter being raised by a nice leopard family.

The only thing that calmed Meryl down was the rhythm of street musicians outside the zoo in Grant Park. I briefly pictured my daughter being raised by a nice couple of bongo-playing Rastafareans.

I'm only joking.

They could have been Episcopalian for all I know.

When we encountered a man playing blues on the guitar Meryl stopped crying for a moment and looked up at him as though to say I feel your pain. When he finished one song I thanked him and explained that she too had been singing the blues ever since we left the zoo.

"I'll play a little somethin' nice for her," he said before strumming a few chords.

Meryl started crying again so I thanked the musician again and pushed Meryl quickly to the car. As I was strapping her into the seat I could still here him singing Summertime and the livin' is easy.

We never did see any panda, much less birthday cake.

Oh well.

Happy birthday, Mei Lan.

My destiny just isn't meant to be

2007-08-24T22:42:00.000-04:00

One of my earliest first grade memories was at the beginning of the school year when the teacher was telling us what we could and couldn't do in her class. Along with the regular classroom management rules was a non sequitur she threw in about not using the phrase "goody goody gumdrops."

This threw me for a loop because at six years of age, I had never heard the phrase before, and come to think of it, I can't recall anytime I've ever used it other than when relaying this same story. As a kid I thought it was odd that someone would ban you from using a phrase that wasn't profane, but as an adult I have a greater appreciation for this criterion. There are some phrases that just grate on my nerves any time I hear them.

Everything happens for a reason.

A friend of mine said this on the phone the other day. I usually don't write about friends, but she isn't going to read my blog anytime soon, so I'll just talk some smack. Whenever I hear someone say that everything happens for a reason, it's usually after they've done something stupid and therefore had to reap the results.

Yes, it is true that everything happens for a reason. That reason is because you or someone else made it happen. No magic here; usually just haphazard decision making.

If such 'n' such doesn't happen, then it just wasn't meant to be.

Again, when did we move the locus of control away from the individual and chalk up the future to some uncontrollable destiny simply to befall us?

When I was working as a real estate agent, I occasionally would hear this from buyers and sellers. Buyers would offer a lowball offer on a house and sellers would jack up their asking price ridiculously high. Each one would say something like, "Well, we're going to counter with this, and if they don't accept, then it just wasn't meant to be."

I'm not going to launch into a debate on pre-determinism versus free will here. I'm just going to tell you how it is according to me, which is really all you need concern yourself with. There is no "meant to be." You make it be.

It's a sign.

STOP is a sign. CAUTION WET FLOOR is a sign. Suddenly noticing the Baskin Robbins out your passenger-side window when you're hungry for an excuse to go back on your diet is not a sign. Identifying something as a sign is usually done by those who want to do something bad but feel as though they need permission to do it. When they can't get that from an individual, they look for the closest coincidence and deem it a sign.

I don't wanna jinx it.

This one bothers me largely because I find myself occasionally saying it. Not counting one's chickens before they hatch is understandable, but simply saying that the eggs are going to hatch does not decrease the likelihood that they will.

I'm just gonna put it in God's hands.

I am convinced that putting something in God's hands is a religiously acceptable way of saying give up. It's as though the person saying it is not only throwing in the towel but also attempting to take a preemptive strike against your calling them on it. After all, if they've handed their problem to a being who's all powerful, how can you argue with them? Why do some people blame God for their own misdeeds?

God has a plan for us;
It's all part of God's plan; and
God works in mysterious ways.

Employ one of these tautologies after a kid gets hit by a car and see what sort of reaction you get.

Consequently:

The Devil made me do it; and
He must have the Devil in him.

If ever there were a reason to do away with our justice system it would be because of the Devil, wouldn't it?

Git 'er done.

I know it's a little off the mark, but I actually heard a kid say this recently in the parking lot as he was about to put groceries in the trunk of his mom's car and I cringed. We should not still be saying this. Really, we never should have said this. Just because it's funny when Larry the Cable Guy says it doesn't mean it's funny when you say it -- much less for the umpteenth time.

I'm starting to sound like that first grade teacher. Out of curiosity I googled her name as well as looked in wikipedia to see if any entries came up about her. Nothing that I can find.

She was a mean bizzie if there ever was one. I distinctly remember her once making fun of a classmate's drawing and yelling at one girl because she couldn't yet count to one hundred.

Oh well.

I guess everything happens for a reason.

All Nations Restaurant and Caribbean

2007-08-24T08:21:00.000-04:00

I often have a penchant for being the odd man out. Whether it's visiting a foreign country or exploring a part of town my mother would call "lock-your-doors," I just enjoy experiencing new things. I don't like using the word diversity because it's one of those loaded words that gets thrown around so much that it's lost its meaning, values and progressive being other examples, but sometimes I've found that breaking out of the mold someone else has designed for you makes for the best stories to tell at the end of the day. Yesterday I took Meryl to a Haitian restaurant.

Lawrenceville is not Petticoat Junction but nor is it a New York or Miami. Within five minutes driving time, I can find Bosnian food, Romanian food, Dominican food or Haitian food, but these restaurants generally do not cater to the urban Anglo who wants to be able to say he ate Szechuan one day and Cantonese the next. Aside from the usual Mexican, Chinese and Thai places, all of which seem to sprout up around here like kudzu, ethnic restaurants cater largely to their own. Sadly, many don't last, but they usually serve up some delicious dishes while they're here. All Nations Restaurant and Caribbean was no exception.

Don't you just love that name? All nations. And Caribbean! This is kinda like saying European nations . . . and Sweden, but I digress.

The restaurant was recommended to me by a Haitian guy I ran into at Wal-Mart. All nations love the big boxes. This guy used to be a student of mine, and when I expressed sadness over Bistro Creole closing its doors, he smiled and said that his friend had opened a new Haitian restaurant around the corner. Enter the suburban Anglo and his Anglokin.

The moment I walked into this place it was like a sauna. I don't know if the air wasn't working or if they just like to keep the restaurant hotter than a Port au Prince sidewalk, but if I was sweating I can't imagine how the people in the kitchen must have felt. We were the only customers in there and Meryl immediately wanted to be put down where she could explore the tables and chairs and fire extinguisher. Somewhat hesitantly I acquiesced.

A woman emerged from the kitchen and said hello.

"Komon ou ye?" I asked, "How are you" being the one phrase I know in Haitian Creole. She smiled and wanted to know where I had learned it. I name dropped a few Haitians I know, thinking maybe this will get me a discount or at least a larger helping. She knew the guy from the Wal-Mart, but I think that's it.

I asked if they have fried plantains. They do. I tried to order on the cheap with a steak and cheese sandwich and plantains. After discussing my selection with the manager it's decided they don't have the fixings for steak and cheese. She suggested Curry Chicken. Hesitantly I acquiesced.

She retreated to the kitchen to prepare our food. The manager, before leaving, turned on the Disney channel, I suppose for Meryl to enjoy. She did, but only peripherally. The plastic tablecloths and bubblegum machines were her main focus, and I spent much of my time chasing after a baby that refused to be held and instead wanted to pull tablecloths off of tables.

Because it was hot as blazes in there, I reached into the cooler and helped myself to a watermelon flavored soda. It was yummy. I don't know that it tastes so much like watermelon as it did cotton candy, but either way, I gulped it down like there was no tomorrow. I found a straw behind the counter and let Meryl have a sip. She didn't like it. Fine, more for me.

The woman, who all this time had been bantering back and forth in Creole with another employee, came back out with our food all wrapped up in a to-go bag. "You should come back many times. We have lots of good Haitian food for you to try," she said to me. I asked if its okay to feed curry chicken to a baby. "Oh yes," she says, "but not with bones of course."

I don't care how hot they keep the restaurant. That food was delicious! The chicken I think was stewed and it just fell off the bone. The flavor was like nothing I had ever tried before. My plantains came with a dipping sauce that I think was a blend of . . . well, I don't know what it was but it was good too. It was yellow, if that means anything to you. Meryl ate the plantains without the sauce, but I liked it.

Speaking of whom, my solitude has now ended because she has woken up. Smells like she needs a diaper.

Probably the curry chicken.

English Class

2007-08-15T16:34:00.000-04:00

This article is about the Mexican president. Click on the link to read about what he wants to do.

http://www.mexiconews.com.mx/miami/22367.html

You can do a lot of things on the internet, but this article talks about something you cannot do. Click on the link below to learn what the article is about.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,51923-page,1/article.html

Gwinnett County aquatic center lap swim farce

2007-08-08T15:15:00.000-04:00

Twice now my daughter in all her infinite cuteness and I were turned away from a Gwinnett County recreational swimming pool. Why? Not because she didn't have the proper attire Both times she had on her swim diaper and regulation plastic pants. It was because we showed up during the three-hour block they call "lap swim."

Do you know what lap swim is? You might think it is a time when nimble bodied triathletes can work on their breast stroke. That's what it sounds like anyway. At the very least you might think it was to provide those who enjoy swimming for exercise an opportunity to do so without having to worry about running into a pool noodle or cute toddler in swim diaper and regulation plastic pants. But "lap swim" is neither of those things.

Lap swim is a misnomer, a coverup for the real reason kids can't go into the pool during those hours. It's because a small group of portly geriatrics needs to work on their bobbing skills. In both cases when I was politely denied access to the big kids' pool because of "lap swim", I peered through plate glass at the Olympic sized pool only to find the token geezer along with some cream rinsed grandmas, all of whom were just bobbing up and down on tiptoe in the pool. There was no displacement involved either. They weren't going anywhere. Just standing in place. Bobbing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to bobbing. I'm sure it can be a life-saving skill for the geriatric crowd. I've seen Cocoon. And Titanic. It's just that they call it lap swim and there's no swimming involved, much less in the form of laps. Instead of lap swim, they should call it "old bob" or something.

And furthermore, regardless of what they called it, why do those oldsters need the entire pool to themselves? Each time the number of people in the group wasn't even in the double digits. How much room do you need to practice your underwater toe touches?

And another thing: there is something amiss when my kid has to wear a swim diaper and plastic pants along with her bathing suit but an octogenarian can get away with only a speedo. That's just wrong for so many reasons.

ScribeFire

2007-07-24T14:02:00.001-04:00

This just in. I'm trying out ScribeFire for Mozilla Firefox. Let's see how this goes.

Call Center Etiquette

2007-07-23T23:17:00.001-04:00

It was a year ago today that I wrote an entry I entitled "Call Center Etiquette" and since that time it has been one of my most highly vistied blog entries. My guess is that people who have been given the runaround on the phone by a customer service representative turn to me via Google in their frustration. Finding the spell-unchecked job-related babble of yet another teledrone probably isn't what they were hoping to find, but because i worked in a call center at the time, I enjoyed rambling on about my job and the sometimes tedious callers. Click here to read it.

Recently I've had my own annoyances with customer help centers, but because of my past experience, I've gotten much better at being a call center caller. By better I don't necessarily mean being more polite; I mean getting what I want. My months in a the cube farm paid off and I thought I'd share some tips in case you're one of those forlorn souls whose tired of verifying the last four digits of your Social Security number only to be transferred to a dial tone.

DON'T THINK THAT BECAUSE SOMEONE PICKS UP THE PHONE THEY WANT TO HELP YOU.

The biggest mistake most people make when calling a call center is assuming that once they tell the rep what's wrong, the rep is going to try and solve their problem. Someone who sits in a cube eight hours of the day listening to irate people yammer on over the phone all for very little pay could really care less about some stranger's problem. The rep has his own problem to solve, mainly how to get you off the phone in as little time as possible.

IF YOU WANT SOMETHING SPECIFIC, DON'T WASTE TIME RAMBLING ON ABOUT HOW YOU DESPISE THE COMPANY.

This does not endear you to the rep or the company. Many people think that because an automated voice tells them the call may be monitored for quality assurance that the CEO is listening in. The vast majority of calls are not recorded, and the only person who hears your tale of woe is someone who has heard the same story over and over all day long to the point of anesthetism. Be calm and be brief.

Furthermore some reps will, after taking a disliking to you, add notes to your profile screen to dissuade any future reps from helping you. Your profile screen is like your permanent record. It follows you wherever you go in the cube farm.

DON'T ALLOW A REP TO REDIRECT YOU FROM THE ISSUE AT HAND.

I was very good at this, and you might be surprised to learn what percentage of angry callers hang up empty handed but happy simply because a rep could steer them away from the reason they called. In my case, I would use the tactic because their problem was not one my company could solve. So rather than simply say I can't do anything for you (because people will talk your ear off after you say something like that), I would find something in their account that I could tweak or change. Some reps will plant a hint of doubt or fear in the caller about something not related to their original concern and then magically come up with the solution to this newly invented problem. Et voila. Another happy customer.

DON'T ASK FOR A SUPERVISOR.

Doing so will almost certainly result in nothing other than you being passed over to the customer service rep's next-cube neighbor. My neighbor and I had an agreement. I was her supervisor and she was mine. If you're not getting the result you want, you'd be better off asking the rep to pass you on to another representative. Tell them their phone is cutting in and out and ask if you can be passed on to someone else. If you really think your problem merits a supervisor, it's time to write a letter.

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE GET THE NAME AND ID OF THE PERSON YOU'RE SPEAKING TO.

This one is tricky because if you ask for a rep's employee ID flat out, they'll assume you want to tattle on them. Try this route instead: Midway in the conversation say in a soothing voice, "You know, So-and-So, you are the first person I've spoken to at your company who understands and is actually trying to help. If I write a letter commending you for good service, do you have a last name or a number or something I can identify you with?

Most reps have some sort of incentive program where they get extra shekels when a customer pays them a compliment. You don't care about a compliment; you just want to be able to say John with employee i.d. 247356 said I should have a credit as opposed to I thought you said I was getting a credit. Notice one has more clout.

DON'T AUTOMATICALLY DISCOUNT THE OVERSEAS CUSTOMER SERVICE REP.

I have found that these people are often far more willing to do something than the stateside crew is. You just have to know how to talk to them. Many people make the mistake of thinking the overseas rep doesn't understand English. They likely do understand English provided it's not too colloquial. If your rampage is fast and heated with run-on sentences and incomplete thoughts, the rep will have difficulty understanding what you want. If you find yourself on the phone with someone who lives in a country where they celebrate Force your Daughter to Work Day, be succinct and use simple sentences.

NO WHEN TO CALL IT QUITS.

I recently had an issue with Vonage phone service where they failed to close my account on time as instructed and billed me for an additional month of service. At first I thought it might be a mistake, so I called their customer support line. After I spoke with the third rep and had waited on hold for north of forty minutes, I realized I was the fool. This was no mistake; it was a shady business practice on their part and no one I spoke with would have the power to help solve my problem. Their call center was designed to frustrate callers to the point of hanging up prematurely and not cancelling the service as a result.

I did finally get the credit back to my account, but it was only after writing a few emails and digging up the phone number of someone who had the authority to make changes. If you're getting the runaround, it's up to you to stop running. There's no point in rushing through a rat race if you're never going to get any cheese.

Before I wrap up, I want to make a request. Some of the favorite comments left on entries I wrote about my horrible experiences with Charter Communications came from people who identified themselves as former Charter employees. If you work in a call center, I want to hear from you. What are some ways callers can make your job easier and still get what they want?

Charter Sucks (the final chapter)

2007-07-19T12:05:00.000-04:00

Today is a day in my household where there is much rejoicing, at least by Papa Bear. My blog and all my cyber-doings come to you now from a new internet provider, namely AT&T. Charter, that previously monopolistic monster that stalked my neighborhood knowing I and other residents had no other choice for bandwidth, has been fired as of yesterday.

If you need to be brought up to speed with my ongoing battle with Charter, click here or here. Either place will take you to some online bitching from yours truly along with commentary from other poor souls, some of whom claimed to have been subjected to Charter's similarly shoddy service and others who claimed to have worked for the company itself.

I stopped counting the phone calls I made to this company's technical support team. I just remember I spoke with people in five different countries, America, Canada, India and the Phillipines. Well . . . that's only four but I probably spoke with a Bangladeshi once the Indian center was experiencing its highest call volume. I'm only guessing.

At different times I received callbacks from follow-up reps, people at the local dispatch office and an executive officer in the technology department. Because I am an effective bitcher I was receiving credits upon credits on my Charter bill to the point that I've now been told I will receive a check in the mail for the outstanding balance. I fully believe I could have continued calling each month to complain about them not having buried a cable in my neighborhood that was causing me to not receive the full bandwidth I subscribed to and they would have continued giving me free internet.

But guess what?

I don't care.

I don't want their shitty internet service that functions only when the Moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars. I want a true always-on connection. I don't mind paying for it. I just want it to work.

Can anyone tell me how I can go about getting the notes that are in my customer profile at Charter? The last few people I spoke with at that company were most anxious to shut me up and get me off their phone. I barely had to ask for a week's worth of credit before being granted an entire month's worth of one. And when I was cancelling my service over the phone, the representative brought up my account after asking for my phone number and I just heard this long "Oooohh . . . " like she couldn't believe whatever she saw on the screen.

I used to work in a call center so I know the info screen on a customer's account is a hotbed for customer service rep gossip and heads-ups. I don't know if it says PER SO-AND-SO AT HQ GIVE HIM A CREDIT or something as simple as THIS GUY'S AN ASSHOLE but I'd love to find out. I still think part of the reason i squeezed as much out of them as I did was because I filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, but I may only be flattering myself. In any case, I only wanted them to deliver what they promised. They never did.

For the record, I have had little difficulty signing up with AT&T so far. There was some confusion on their part as to when they were coming to my house to perform various tasks but after two visits I now have a working phone and innerwebs. They have promised me some cashback awards that will arrive over the next six weeks time and their asses better deliver.

The tech who came out to the house to hook up my DSL couldn't have been more polite. He even went to the trouble of setting up my router to work with my laptop and installed some file management software on my computer. He also spoke at length about his most recent love interest, but I offered him a bottled Coke the moment he showed up so he might have thought I wanted to be his friend. I don't care.

He only drank about half the Coke before he left it sitting on the floor next to the hole he drilled in my baseboard. I finished the drink before recycling the bottle. Yeah, I drank after him. So what? He was good people.

P..S. Now Vonage is screwing me over royally but I'll have to address that later.

Filthiest baby alive

2007-05-29T21:54:00.000-04:00

My wife and I recently met friends and their progeny at the Discover Mills mall near our home. Because we live in a suburban Mecca there are actually two malls near us, Discover Mills and Mall of Georgia. I usually take my daughter to Mall of Georgia because it's kids' area has a playhouse complete with slide, comfy benches and a plethora of children's books filed away in mahogany bookshelves. The Discover Mills play area has a few giant concrete bugs to play on and the occasional hypodermic needle.

Just teasing. It was probably just used for knitting.

Anyway, Discover Mills has a Lego store and an As Seen on TV store. Now do you see why we went there? Regardless, it's not the kids' play area I want to talk about; it's the food court surrounding it. Specifically I want to talk about the wonderful parents we saw and compare them to the bad parents we are.

First let me alibi and say I never eat fast food. Never. I gave it up years ago after I found it disgustingly necessary to limit my drive-through meals to only one in a twenty-four hour period. Shouting into the clown once a day is gross enough. Any more than that and a person becomes some weird Isle of Dr. Moreau creature that's half human and half polyunsaturated blubber. That being said, I promptly went up to the fry gal at Burger King and ordered a Double Cheese combo of my own volition. I ate it.

All.

And a Hershey chocolate pie. It had been years and I thought what the hell? What's the worst that can happen? I get cancer? Ha! I laugh in the face of cancer. Ha ha! Ha hahaha cough cough wheeze. Moving on.

I not only ate most of the fries myself, I decided to share some of them along with the burger with my one-year-old daughter. Did my wife get any? No. She was too busy scarfing down Sbarro's pizza. We like to pretend pizza, regardless of its origin, isn't fast food. Same goes for fried chicken.

Quit making fun. You're not the boss of us.

Our daughter was happily sitting in a grungy highchair to which we hadn't even cared to give a precursory wipedown with a moist towelette. Furthermore, while we do own a Baby Easy Clean Shopper, it looks so good up in Meryl's closet that we can't bare to bring it down and use it. When my kid licks the edge of the communal food court table, I just avert my eyes and bury my face in two all-beef patties.

Across from us is this similarly aged couple with their two boys, both of whom are running around the lead-based play area in their bare feet. No big deal. The kids are probably up on their tetnus shots. I'm just telling you so you get an idea of the local color.

Anyway, while my family is all devouring whatever badness is in front of us, this neighboring husband and wife team spend a good five minutes scrubbing everything around them with baby wipes. He cleans the top of the table. She wipes the edges of the table. He cleans the seat of the highchair. She washes the arms of the highchair. They even clean their own chairs, including the backs I didn't see what they all ate, but the youngest member of the family got to snack on YoBaby brand yoghurt.

How do you spell that anyway? I don't feel like looking it up. Is it yoghurt? Yogurt? Yoh Gert! Idunno.

My question is this: If you're such a germphobe, why are you even taking your kids to the food court at a local mall to eat? And then more importantly, when you get out the wipes and hand sanitizer are you really wiping said germs away? Or are you just wiping them around?

That's almost as bad as guys who after using the restroom hold the door handle with a paper towel and then drop the paper towel on the floor. As if the bathroom door handle is the only thing in whatever venue you happen to find yourself that has germs on it. And while I'm on the topic, guys who meticulously wash their hands after taking a leak in a public bathroom are all just giving the rest of us a bad name. Unless you routinely urinate on your hands, this is superfluous washing.

Do you wash your hands after shaking hands with someone else? After picking up an item someone hands you? After you scratch your head do you wash your hand? Why does touching the fifth appendage merit extra hygienic aftermath? I've never understood the logic in that. Frankly, I don't think there is any.

Our table received no scrubdown, and my daughter probably had schmutz on her moosh from the breakfast she ate earlier in the morning. She's still alive. But like I said, we're bad parents that way. Do not replicate.

Random musings from an equally random guy

2007-05-08T21:22:00.000-04:00

Be forewarned that I have no rhyme or reason to what I am about to say. This evening's entry will likely be a list of short blurbs about the life and times of a part-time miscreant. Furthermore what you read from this point forward may or may not be heavily influenced by the forty-dollar sparkling my wife and I are enjoying along with the prescription medicine I am taking to relieve a toothache. The warning label on the latter clearly depicts a full martini glass covered with the international symbol for no-don't-tell-anyone-you're-doing-this.

I know some would rebound from their blog absence with a diatribe about why they haven't posted anything of merit in a while or apologize for not having commented on others' blogs, but guess what?

We don't roll that way around here.

It's good to be the king.

On May 5th though when many of our neighbors south of the ~~American~~ Canadian border were out celebrating their ancestors' defeat of the French army in the Battle of Puebla(which if you think about it is like celebrating kicking a shortbus passenger while he's off his meds) my daughter celebrated her first trip around the sun. One year has come and gone, and while the days have seemed like weeks this first year has flown as though it were only a month.

My baby's not really a baby anymore. Whereas once my wife and I applauded her holding her head up on her own, now we chase after her as she races to the dog bowl, the toilet bowl or the cleaning supplies to find something new to put in her mouth. Thankfully none of the plants in our home are poisonous. How do we know this? Because I think it's safe to say she's sampled them all. The same can be said for the weeds in our front yard.

I subscribe to a list serve for local stay-at-home dads. For the record, I don't like that term. I only use it for lack of a better one. Trapped-at-home dad is more indicative of how you feel when you sign up for the gig, at least at first.

Anyway, most of the information on these list serves is rather blase. One guy bitches about having to be at home while his wife works. Another complains that he isn't being allowed to join any of the local moms' groups. Someone else talks of his kid's recent trip to the doctor. Riveting news, huh? This morning though I got an email from the guy who heads up the Atlanta stay-at-home dads' group saying there was going to be the "World's Largest Playgroup" at a nearby mall.

Well, the mall was about 30 minutes from my house (90 during Atlanta rush hour) but come on. It's the world's largest freakin' playgroup for Falwell's sake. No way I'm gonna miss that.

Meryl and I showed up at Perimeter Mall and followed the music to this babypalooza. Funnily enough it was located right outside of Spencer's Gifts, and their store window features some scantily clad bimbo hawking a flavored body lotion. I'm just glad someone's still looking out for us stay-at-home dads.

A nearby placard announced the day's festivities which included performances by different musicians, storytimes, raffles for stuff you don't really need or want, and car seat demonstrations.

When we sat down Meryl was happy to stay put and watch the Kindermusik instructors for all of about four minutes. After that not even their peekaboo scarves and rattle eggs could keep her occupied. By the time the woman on stage was singing in her soothing slow voice Shakers away! Shakers away! It's time to put the shakers away!, my kid was making a beeline for the adult party games and blacklight posters across the way.

We left with several of the free giveaways like bubbles, a bib, a onesie and some diaper rash cream as well as two Kindermusik egg rattles that were supposed to have been returned. Unfortunately while chasing down my kid, I couldn't find a Kindermusic recipient quickly enough to give back the rattles. I guess that means the egg rattles aren't giveaways so much as they are stealaways.

Oh well. Life goes on.

In other news, my tooth effing hurts! This is the same tooth (I think) that I wrote about many moons ago back in October of 2005 when I was told I might need a root canal. I ended up only getting a filling and have been pain free up until only recently. I can't believe it! Since that appointment I have been flossing three times every ice age. Life is so unfair.

My wife and daughter and I are going out of town in a few days to visit my sister and brother-in-law along with their new bouncing baby girl. I just hope my tooth doesn't choose family vacation as a time to erupt into agonizing abcess.

If I had to pick one issue about which I see eye to eye with my conservative bretren, it would have to be the crippling effects caused by the oral decay of America. Doesn't anyone care about the children?

In other news, this champagne sure is good.

Peace out.

Love,
Kevin

Cursed (two syllables) email

2007-04-30T12:25:00.000-04:00

Have you ever stopped to think about the hefty price we pay for having an email address? I'm not talking about having to sort through the messages relating to Nigerian banking scams or Tijuana-based erectile dysfunction drug companies. Those are certainly a pain to have to weed through, but in my book those annoyances don't measure up to the accountability we are subjected to by electronic mail.

In the past I've had a few potential employers and organizations ask me for my email address only to follow up with the question How often do you check your email? Because I want the position (whatever it is at the time) I always say that i check my email daily, which is usually true, but in doing so I obligate myself, at least to some degree, of being on call 24 hours a day. In other words, it opens up the door for an employer to email me and expect an answer regardless of whether I'm scheduled to appear at work that day.

This is not so much a gripe as it is an observation.

This brings to mind the people who call up and upon getting an answering machine say I know you're there so pick up the phone.

How dare they?

When I was single I would constantly change the message on my answering machine. Once when I was fed up with aforementioned types my message said:

Please leave a message after the beep. Do understand
however that leaving a message does not obligate me to call you back. Also
if I am screening my calls, announcing who you are does not obligate me to pick
up the phone. My phone does not control me; I control my phone.

That message got mixed reviews. Some friends took it as a personal attack which was not my intention. I just couldn't believe the audacity of those who would assume that because they wanted me to answer my phone I should drop whatever i was doing and do their bidding.

Would these same people invite themselves into your living room and ask you to make them a sandwich? Can't you just hear them say Don't forget to cut the crusts off! They probably wouldn't be so bold, but in essence that's basically what they're doing when they make demands of you via the telephone.

Going back to the job application, what if instead of asking how often you check your email, it asked how often you were willing to work for free outside of your scheduled hours? After all, isn't this really what the question is asking when you get right down to it? Otherwise, why wouldn't the sender just wait until you clocked in to ask you whatever they needed?

As cantankerous as I may seem at times, I am not into complaining about things that are within my control. I used to work at a job where coworkers would complain about how little they made, yet they would continue to show up for work every day.

Talk is cheap.

My argument was that we set our own worth every day that we clocked in. Regardless of how "poorly" the employer was rewarding us, we told that employer we were okay with that every day that we showed up for work.

The same is true for responding to someone's email. If I respond during my personal time, I'm telling the sender I am willing to file them into the same category as I do my family and friends. I'm saying I'm just as anxious to receive their news as I am my niece's prom pictures or my friend's latest gossip or my wife's cherished sweet nothings.

If this isn't the case, I have only myself to blame.

I am curious to hear how others have dealt with this dilemma.

Blessed be the taxman

2007-04-17T10:28:00.000-04:00

Blessed be the taxman for he bringeth us our refund. We shout and holler praise for the almighty deductions. Huzzah!

Yes, I know this money is actually nothing more than the piddly remains of what I've already forked out to the government and gotten back in the form of a check, but so what? If we didn't pay our taxes to the United States, who would fund the weapons of mass destruction? And then if there were no weapons of mass destruction, how could we justify the weapons of mass destruction destruction? And then hard working Americans would be out of a job now wouldn't they?

Our checks, both from the state and George W., came and went. No sooner were they in our mitts than they were rushed off to our credit union for deposit. No sooner were they deposited than they were spent. Thanks to a great tax guy and a thousand-dollar procreation credit our family has two more toys to boot.

And there was much rejoicing.

One toy is the notebook computer upon which I am typing to you now. It is a Compaq Presario XYZ-LMNOP or something like that. Does anyone else remember back when we called these things laptops? Remember Y2K compliance? Those were the days, my friend.

This computer replaces the seven-year old doorstop of a laptop I've been working on for the past . . . well . . . seven years. Actually, I won't throw out the old computer. It still works provided I'm willing to sit through the five-minute bootup . It also has writings and other creative endeavors of yours truly dating back to ye olde college days.

I don't know why I keep those papers, but whenever I get a new computer, I always transfer over old documents for which I have absolutely no use. I once wrote an essay comparing a novel by late Senegalese author, Mariama Bâ, to French philosopher Prévost's Manon Lescaut. The long title for the latter is actually Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut.

Does anyone really care about the title, much less to read my sophomoric literary opinions on the subject in pisspoor French? Then why has this oeuvre survived now for six or seven hard drives?

Explain your answer.

My new computer is pretty sweet, especially considering I only spent $480 on it after the $30 rebate. I'll keep you informed, gentle reader, as to whether or not I ever receive the rebate. Oh yes, I will keep you informed. Hopefully Staples will pull through though. Signing up for the rebate on their website couldn't have been easier.

I also am playing on Windows Vista which, for all practical purposes is semi-somewhat better than XP. I guess. I haven't taken the bundled cyber tour of what all new features I can expect from this new operating system, but I'm sure it's chocked full of user-friendly features I will never use.

One annoyance is the pop-up program called the HP Total Care Advisor slash PC Health and Security. I really haven't figured out what all this does that benefits me as a person. I have learned from other innerwebbers that the program actually slows down my system performance considerably and it contains an equally annoying innerweb search window down in the taskbar. Again, I'm not sure what good any of this does me. I'm a big believer in if-it-ain't-broke-don't-eff-with-it, and furthermore why is the program called what it is? It sounds like it was installed by Kaiser Permanente or some other health care provider.

And that's another thing? Have computers and their minions usurped the term health care the same way they did viruses? Are we now going to have to distinguish between human health and computer health?

I also recently purchased a Sharp Notevision projector and let me just tell you that this thing rocks in all caps. Why anyone would spend thousands on a large-screen TV when they could get one of these for under $700 is beyond me. You hook it up to your DVD player, notebook computer or whatever and project whatever you wanna watch up on to your wall. The image quality is stupendous. It's like being at the movies only the drinks are cheaper and you can still here the film when you're in the bathroom.

Even cooler is that we plug up the audio to the wireless speakers so we can easily listen to surround-sound. And since the speakers are wireless, we could easily take the whole thing outside and host a neighborhood movie night up against the garage door.

I know that sounds naughty but it's really not.

Anyway, deductions plus good tax guy plus impulse equals toys. And that's what it's all about.

Where have all the bloggers gone?

2007-04-04T20:58:00.000-04:00

A dear friend of mine begins his blog with the phrase If you haven't got anything to say, then by all means, start a blog.

I'm sorry, but isn't this just the truth? What other medium allows us to so blatantly self-indulge or better yet feign author status when in fact we are contributing little more to the literary universe than Marcia Brady's lost diary (if you don't remember, just google it.)

Early on in my career as a professional freelance pro bono autobiographic blogger, I posted about a lot of the goo you find when you surf through internet blogs: political rants, gratuitous profanity, the usual self-aggrandizement and so on. Since that time I've noticed a common trend among those of us who like to share the nothingness of our lives with anyone who might regularly read our blogs or at least stumble upon them after googling "free panties." The trend I'm referring to is the blogging exodus.

Some of the best blogs I've run across have gone through some sort of cyber restructuring or in some cases, just come to an end. There have been still more that I no longer link to simply because they're not updated with fresh material. And while at first I scoffed at those bloggers who made some final spiel before leaving the world o' blogs, I am the first to feel jilted when a blog just stops dead in its tracks without any explanation being given.

Take for example Soap in My Mouth. It was written by a fellow Atlanta blogger. I don't know her from Adam, but her stuff was funny, hip, and genuinely interesting to read. Her last post dates back to mid-January and it talks about her being ill. And that's it.

Well, did she ever recover?

Did she die?

Has she been incarcerated all this time? Without an update, we'll never know. And on some level, this bothers me.

Fat Asian Baby was one of those bloggers who on March 21, 2006 at least told us why she was leaving. One of the reasons she sited incidentally was the very reason also sited by Blonde Vigilante in one of her pre-exit posts, the fear of someone you know discovering your blog. Fat Asian Baby (whose also Jewish -- go figure) finally came back much to my delight, and Blonde Vigilante (whose not blonde -- go figure) shut down her discovered blog and started anew.

Again much to my delight. Her shit is funny. She starts her blog profile with Circle, circle, dot, dot...welcome to my blogspot. It just gets funnier from there. I don't know who it was who found out about her blog, but I hope they don't find this one. I don't want to have to chase her all around the innerwebs again.

The End is Now author is one of those who gave us notice that he was leaving but has since returned. His blog is currently under some sort of overhaul and a lot of his older stuff I can't find anymore, but he's definitely worth checking out. His funniest bit is one I couldn 't find on his own blog, but someone else out there copied and pasted. Why Lie? I Need A Pie is an absolute must to add to your reading list. The guy stands outside a McDonalds with a sign panhandling so he can get money to buy an apple pie. To this day, if my wife sees me reading his blog, she'll ask, "Is that the Ineedapie guy?"

Blog Antagonist is another one gave ample notice of her departure but then returned. We're glad she did of course. Anyone who titles her blog Blogs Are Stupid has got to rock.

I don't know why I thought this new trend deserved a post unto itself. This is not my own final remark. I don't plan on going anywhere. I just think it's kind of funny that along with this relatively new method of expression comes some emerging protocol for its end.

You know, I'm trying to come up with a somewhat interesting way of ending this entry, but I really just don't have anything further to say. Then again if my friend mentioned at the beginning is correct, having nothing to say is tantamount to having a blog.

Charter sucks (part deux)

2007-03-31T22:01:00.000-04:00

For those who care, I've updated my diatribe on my on-going battle with Charter. Click here if you dare.

I got a haircut today

2007-03-31T00:32:00.000-04:00

I got a haircut today.

Please, no more applause.

This was a bit of a milestone for me, not just because I needed one but also because I took the plunge and finally went to a new hair dresser. In a salon. Like, there were actually plants, decent music and faux-hardwood floors there. I'm used to going to one of those in-and-out ten-dollar jobbies.

I am generally loyal to a hair dresser. I find that they are people with whom it's worth it to build a long-standing professional relationship. Even in the in-and-out ten dollar jobbies I always saw the same stylist. In fact, there was a period when I went to the same stylist for almost ten years. I saw her through two husbands, three lesbian lovers and yet another husband.

Did I mention she also eventually found Jesus?

Yes, she had three husbands, three lesbian lovers and she found Jesus. Though it wasn't necessarily in that order. As I recall Jesus came after the lesbians and before the third husband.

Oh my God, did I just say that? That sounds like a line from a racy South American romance novel doesn't it? I will surely burn in tuna for that.

I kept going to her through all that.

That is until one day . . .

(insert blurring image of present day and slowly steadying wavy image of past event)

(Oh yeh, and the sound of someone strumming on a harp)

When I began chemotherapy a few years ago, I knew my hair was likely to fall out. That's a given that most people know about chemotherapy. Your hair falls out. What many don't realize though is that you don't just wake up one morning bald. Hair loss is a gradual process that starts with a few strands on your pillow, then more in the shower, and after several more rounds of intravenous Drain-O and weedkiller your hair becomes patchy and gross and makes you look like the cancer kid that you are.

Being the cancer cult resistor that I am, I didn't want to let my hair get to the point where it looked like I was trying to elicit sympathy from others, so one day I went to my stylist and told her it was time. She knew about my diagnosis so it was no surprise to her. She even had another customer with the same form of cancer.

Testicular for those not already in the know.

Anyway, she cut and buzzed and cut and buzzed and I watched as clumps of hair fell to the floor. I know it sounds sad but choosing baldness before it chose me was actually quite liberating. The only problem was that even the closest setting on a pair of clippers will leave a minimal amount of hair at each follicle, and I didn't want to leave a trail of mousy brown hair dust in my wake.

You never know when that Grissom and his team are going to be trailing along after you with forceps and a plastic baggie. Can't you just see that muppety assistant of his looking at hair under a microscope saying, "we ran tests on it, and it showed traces of bleomycin and cisplatin. That can only mean one thing." Then Grissom would say some cheesy line like "it looks like the ball's in our court now." If you ask me that program jumped the shark about three metro areas ago.

But back to our regularly scheduled blog entry.

So my stylist got this idea and she went to retrieve the wax they generally reserve for eyebrows. A rather novel idea I thought and I told her to go for it. Unfortunately she didn't have enough wax or large enough strips do do a whole head, so she sent me to the beauty supply store to buy my own.

When I came back twenty dollars poorer, she and another stylist took turns running to heat up wax and ripping the last bit of hair from my head. It wasn't as painful as I thought. The only place it hurt was around my ear and at the nape of my neck. As for the rest of my head, it was bright red from the whole ordeal but at least when they were finished I was truly bald.

Here's the kicker.

When she rang me up, she told me my total was seventy five dollars.

SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS!

A seven. And a five.

And that didn't account for the twenty I spent at the beauty supply place.

When I asked her if she was joking she explained that had I gone to a more upscale salon and had two stylists working on my hair for that amount of time, they would have charged me $150.

"Would they have asked me to buy my own wax?" I asked.

She crossed out the $75 and instead wrote $55. Remember, this was in one of those in-and-out ten dollar jobbies. With a stylist I had gone to for years. Years, I tell you. When it was busy at times, I'd even be the one the stylists would ask to answer the phone and schedule peoples' appointments for them.

She joked that it was job security because now I wasn't going to be seeing her for several months.

Several months? Do you realize how badly I wanted to shout I got cancer, Lady; I might not be coming back at all. Though, come to think of it, then she probably would have scratched out the $55 and put $95. The money wasn't even the issue; it was the principle of the thing.

Oh well.

That was the last day my hair hit her floor.

Anyway, I got my hair cut today.

Charter sucks

2007-03-21T21:50:00.000-04:00

Note: This entry has been updated as of March 31, 2007. The amended text is to be found at the bottom of the screen.

Dear Charter Communications,

The bad news is you suck. The good news? I think I can help. Allow me first to provide you with some background information and then I'll offer free suggestions as to how you can make your technical support service more efficient.

Because you are a near-monopoly in my area for high-speed internet I have to subscribe to your service if I want to look at the innerwebs. Yes, I have the option of paying a gazillion dollars per megasmurf for a satellite-based connection, but since I can't begin to afford that, I pay you. In return you provide me with shoddy service and technical support that is pisspoor at best.

Here is where my help comes in.

When I call your line and am finally connected to you, I have likely spent the last five minutes of my time fighting my way through a response-driven automaton that requests that I perform such seemingly pointless tasks as unplugging the modem, turning off the computer and confirming that the modem you sent me has in fact worked in the past. After nearly every response I then have to answer the same question again because the fembot on the other end of the phone asks stupid things like I think I heard you say you're having trouble connecting to the internet. Is that right?

Additionally while on hold I likely had to listen to ads for high-speed internet service, the very service, mind you, that I'm calling to complain about. The ads add insult to injury because they talk about what high quality service Charter provides and even goes so far as to call that service an "always-on connection."

News flash.

If the service were truly always on, I wouldn't be calling.

So you see, before you ever answer the phone, my frustration is being elevated even further by the automated prompting and solicitous teasing your company subjects me to. That being said, here are a few things you can do to not irritate me more.

DO NOT ASK IF I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN PURCHASING A FASTER INTERNET SPEED.

If your company cannot even provide me with cheapest speed for which I now pay, why do you think I would be willing to pay you even more money for a service that I imagine would be equally as unreliable?

LIKEWISE DO NOT ASK IF I WANT TO PURCHASE CABLE TV FROM YOU.

Again, even if I were interested in cable television, which I'm not, why would I purchase it from a company that can't even get my internet up and running?

Am I making sense?

Do you see where I'm coming from?

DO NOT ASK IF I WANT TO PURCHASE THE SO-CALLED WIRE PROTECTION PLAN OR WHATEVER IT'S CALLED.

I have called to report my internet being down who knows how many times, and each time a technician comes out to discover the problem is on your end. I resent whole-heartedly the fact that you try and play on my supposed insecurities or lack of intelligence in order to get me to purchase some $6 monthly junk fee so that in the rare instance when my internet connection isn't working because of something I've done you will come and fix my mistake.

If I had paid the $6 fee for the 48 or so months that I've had your service I would have paid for your CEO's orthodonture bill three times over by now with no benefit to me. Conversely if it should happen that someday my internet connection isn't working because I pummeled my modem with a sledge hammer or something I would therefor have to pay $35. You do the math.

DO NOT TRY TO MAKE IDLE CHITCHAT WITH ME WHILE YOU'RE JUMPING THROUGH THE HURDLES YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH IN ORDER TO GET A TECHNICIAN OUT TO MY HOUSE.

I am pissed when I call, and you asking about the crying baby in the background or what my local weather's like surprisingly doesn't make me any calmer nor does it make me want to be your new friend. Asking me things like whether I use the internet for business or pleasure will only result in making me angrier. When I call you, I'm not using the internet for business or pleasure. I'm not using it because you won't provide me with the always-on service you tout. My internet isn't on. That's why I'm calling.

Capiche?

One agent actually had the audacity to ask me how my voiceover internet phone service (i.e. Vonage) was working out for me. First of all this question reaks of a segue into asking if I'd be willing to purchase some phone service from you for an additional fee and secondly, I have no problems with my current telephone service provider except when my internet connection is down. In other words, my phone works until you mess it up.

I am not necessarily opposed to purchasing additional services from you, but before I do so, I'd like to see the one service you do provide me with operate continually for at least six months. Does that sound unreasonable to you?

IF I ASK FOR YOUR OPERATOR I.D. DO NOT RESPOND BY ASKING ME DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG?

One of your agents was kind enough to explain to me that because you are not permitted to give your last name to me for security reasons, you are then required, when asked, to give out your operator ID. I have worked in a call center so I understand the hesitancy in doing so, but the fact is you have to do it. If you refuse, I will immediately call back and ask the agent who answers for the operator ID of the last person with whom I spoke. I will likely preface this request with something like The last person I spoke with was so helpful that I'd like to write a letter telling the VP of sales what a good job he did. So taken aback was I with his outstanding service that I neglected to get his operator ID. Would you be so kind as to give it to me? Thanks.

Granted, that's usually a ruse, but I have written such letters in the past to express my gratitude for exceptional customer service. Regardless, if you were the paranoid ninny who wouldn't give me her operator ID, I did call back to get it from one of your next-cube neighbors.

So booyah!

Now for a few kudos . . .

On the past two occasions I've had to call because my internet service is down (both calls were made in the same week), a technician came out to my house the same day of my call. Before when I would call I was told to wait for as long as two weeks before someone would come out to the house. And even then that person could only diagnose the problem. I had to wait even longer for someone else to come out and fix it.

This newly implemented prompt service could simply be an improvement in your company's inner workings, but I can't help but wonder if it's because my customer profile shows I've previously filed a complaint against you with the FCC. Regardless, thanks for the speedy service.

I do however wish you would send someone out to my neighborhood to bury the cable you currently have stretching across three driveways into my lawn. The makeshift repair job your crew did has already been disconnected once. I'm tempted to blame some hoodlum kids waiting for the bus because I'm crotchety that way, but truth be told it could be the result of any of the three next-door neighbors pulling out to go to work in the morning. For all I know a squirrel is the culprit, but it wouldn't have happened if you made the necessary repairs.

I swear that doohickey R2-D2-looking thing down the street where you have all those bootleg wires coming out is reminiscent of the communications device that E.T. jerry rigged using a Speak & Spell and some dental floss. Is that actually dangerous or just ghetto? 'Cause either way, we don't roll like that around here.

In closing, I just want to state that I don't think the biggest dumbasses out there are your customers; they're your stockholders. Sure, I continue to pay you for a crappy product which is pretty stupid when you think about it, but if your company continues its current standard of service once regional monopolies are busted up by encroaching competition, Charter sales will plummet and so will your NASDAQ rating. I'm no doomsdayer. This just goes without saying.

Once this happens, Charter Communications will go the way of Betamax and meanwhile I'll still be trying to get my blog fix via some clothesline and 1980s children's toys.

With any luck Drew Barrymore will show up and offer to take me trick or treating.

Sincerely,
The Management

3/31/07 -- Because my headache with Charter continues, I have decided to keep a running log of progresses and setbacks I encounter along the way. Here's a brief rundown of today's events.

I received a bill in the mail for $90.29, a whopping $40 more than my usual bill. Closer inspection showed a $35 charge for cable television service for which I do not subscribe and the price I normally pay for internet service increased by $5. I know from personal experience having worked in a call center that these types of issues are best handled one at a time, especially if the customer service rep isn't a native English speaker. I got the impression from this rep's accent that indeed he was not.

No worries. I don't care if a guy has an accent. I just want my problem solved.

I spoke with Michael who freely gave me an operator I.D. He was polite, efficient and easy to understand. He claimed that the $35 was a one-time service charge because of the technician who came out to half-ass repair a broken cable along my street.

OK, half-ass was my wording not his.

When I explained to Michael that I had been told I would only have had to pay the $35 if and only if the wiring problem was inside my house (which it was not), he put me on hold, came back and removed the service charge.

That was nice, but I still had lots of issues with my bill.

I pointed out that my previous bill had been for only $50.29 and most recently I was being charged $54.99 for the same service. Michael again put me on hold and returned saying I was sent something in the mail about an upcoming increase in my monthly service charge. Because I had received no such notice, he not only said he would reinstate my $49.99 plan but also give me three months of a promotional deal at only $39.99 per month. This would take effect on my next three billing cycles, i.e. the bills I would receive on or around April 27, May 27 and June 27.

Already let me just say that Michael has provided me with far better assistance than most of the previous people I've spoken to at Charter put together. And that's a shitload of people. Then again if Michael worked for a company that better handled its billing and service provision, he wouldn't have to deal with people like me on the phone.

Anyway, I still had some concerns about my bill. The front of it looked like this:

Mind you this was after a bit of scribbling on my part, and I edited out my personal info and such. I don't need you weirdos trying to hunt me down.

But notice the charge for cable television and the increase in charges for internet service. Incidentally I love the little blurb that says Expect More from Charter.

Trust me. I do.

A lot more.

But the back of my bill looks like this:

I'd like to say it sheds more light on the whole matter, but really it just confuses me further. Look at the $5 fee. You know what that's for?

You'd think by looking at it that I rent a cable modem from Charter, but indeed I don't. I own the modem outright. When I asked for further clarificaiton on this charge, Michael informed me that this was a fee I pay . . . are you ready for this? . . . because I don't order any other lines of service from Charter.

In other words, they charge me for internet service, and on top of that they charge me more money because I don't order anything else from them. You might think they'd just roll the fee in to my one service fee, but they don't. They write it out plain as day.

Well, not exactly plain as day. They try and make it look like it's for a legitimate service, i.e. modem rental, when in fact it's nothing more than a penalty fee. To further confirm this, I asked Michael if I were to cancel my Charter services (trust me in that I've thought about it on multiple occasions) would I be expected to then return the modem?

"Certainly not," he said.

While Michael provided me with more help than I expected, he still was unable to provide an answer to my next question. Frankly, no one else at Charter has either. That is: What happens if I receive my next bill one month from now and at that time Charter's maintenance team still has not come out to my house to repair the jerryrigged contraption in my neighborhood with a cable that stretches across three driveways?

So far my answer has been that once they do come out, I can call and get a credit for the time the service was down. As I understand it, this means they expect me to continue paying for lack of service with the expectation of getting back the money I already paid once the service comes back up.

As ludicrous as this sounds, I might be okay with that if I were truly going to receive a credit dating all the way back to when the service was down. But something tells me that when that time does come and they do bury the cable in the neighborhood, I'm going to call back for a credit dating back to March 21, and they're going to tell me I'm out of luck because I already paid the bill for that billing cycle.

I don't know this for a fact, but I do suspect, and I'm going to let you know if and when it happens.

I am thankful for the help I received today, and I likely will write a letter expressing my gratitude and restating what was said to me for purposes of clarification. After all what people say to you on the phone means nothing. It's what they bill you for that counts.

Incidentally does anyone know what happens if I write to the governement agency they list as the franchise authority in small print at the bottom of the page? In my case they said it's my county commissioner's office though they didn't capitalize the name of my county. There is no excuse for that.

Gwinnett is great, y'all.